Many dentists or hygienists provide scaling and polishing for patients at regular intervals, even if those patients are considered to be at low risk of developing periodontal disease. There is debate over the clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness of 'routine scaling and polishing' and the 'optimal' frequency at which it should be provided for healthy adults.A 'routine scale and polish' treatment is defined as scaling or polishing or both of the crown and root surfaces of teeth to remove local irritational factors (plaque, calculus, debris and staining), that does not involve periodontal surgery or any form of adjunctive periodontal therapy such as the use of chemotherapeutic agents or root planing.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 40. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 October 2025.
All research outputs
#1,302,522
of 34,590,055 outputs
Outputs from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#2,468
of 14,756 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#10,038
of 265,728 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#46
of 246 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,590,055 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,756 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 38.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 265,728 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 246 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
