SmileCon Conference, Washington DC – October 23-24, 2025
Dr. Thomas Van Dyke was on a panel with Dr. Dan Croley from Delta Dental of California and Dr. Hazel Glasper on the topic of Mouth-body Connection and Interdisciplinary Care.
This interactive session focused on the relationship of oral disease to systemic disease. Both the role of bacteria and the role of inflammation were discussed as they related to impact on systemic disease. The clear consensus was that inflammation plays a key role in the pathogenesis of oral inflammatory diseases like periodontitis and that local inflammatory lesions like periodontitis have a significant impact on systemic inflammatory disease.
Bacteria play a major role in the initiation of inflammation both local and systemically, but the treatment target appears to be the inflammation, since without control of inflammation, it is impossible to reliably control the bacteria.