Dental and periodontal complications of labial and tongue piercing.

Piercing is the practice of puncturing some parts of the body to apply ornamental objects. The presence of oral and perioral piercings are a risk factor for many acute and chronic complications, such as chipping of the dental enamel, periodontal lesions and infection. The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of lip and tongue piercing complications in the dental and periodontal tissues in a sample of young adults. Twenty-five adult patients were examined (test group: 11 males and 14 females with an average age of 23.4+/-3.6 years) who had had a minimum of one labial or tongue piercing for at least 1 year and were compared with 25 subjects (control group: 11 males - 44 percent, and 14 females - 56 percent) without any lingual or labial piercing. A questionnaire was compiled for each patient and a clinical examination was performed. The following parameters were examined by the same operator: abnormal toothwear, tooth chipping or cracking, clinical attachment loss (CAL), probing pocket depth (PD) and gingival recession (GR, classified by using Miller s classification). The data were analyzed using X2 or Fisher s exact test for small numbers and non-parametric Mann-Whitney or Kruskal-Wallis tests to examine for differences in continuity; the level of significance was p less than 0.05. According to the results found in the present study the prevalence of abnormal tooth wear and tooth chipping was higher in the subjects with labial or lingual piercing. Moreover, patients with tongue or labial piercing exhibited a higher GR in comparison to control subjects without any oral piercing. No differences were observed between the two groups as regards CAL and PD. A significant association between the duration of piercing and dental defects was found in the group of patients with piercings with greater prevalence of tooth and periodontal defects in the group of 13 subjects who had had the piercings for a period less than or equal to 4 years.