Company Spotlight - Perio Protect, LLC
Based in St. Louis MO and founded in 2005, Perio Protect LLC markets the prescription Perio Tray® and provides continuing education for dental professionals on the Perio Protect Method, a minimally invasive approach that incorporates prescription tray delivery into treatment programs. Given that the Perio Tray is classified as a prescription medical device and needed FDA clearance to come to market, it was not a simple road to set up shop. The product development and the perseverance to bring the product to market are the result of years of work by Duane C. Keller DMD.
The idea for Perio Tray delivery began when Duane needed a non-invasive way to treat his own mother who he had referred for periodontal surgery. Mercedes Keller finished one quadrant of surgery but refused to return for more. She insisted that there had to be a better, more comfortable way to treat the disease and challenged Duane to find it, volunteering to try any ideas he had. He had a lot of ideas. The most promising subgingival delivery options included tufted floss, special brushes, syringes, and irrigation systems. But none could overcome crevicular fluid flow.
Successful treatment required medication to be delivered deep into the pockets and to stay in place. He began to experiment with tray delivery, but all the trays leaked. “I had to figure out how to prevent the medication from spilling or seeping out of the tray and I wanted to get the medication as deep as possible. I also wanted this to be easy for patients to do,” recalls Duane. “Crafting peripheral seals on the trays worked the best and patients liked them.” Once the technology was patented and FDA clearance secured, Duane and a few angel investors established Perio Protect LLC in 2005.
With a company team and successful pilot studies in place, Perio Protect funded larger research projects which showed the benefits of placing hydrogen peroxide gel into periodontal pockets. Originally localized delivery of antibiotics were intended for treatment, but as sometimes happens with science, surprising results change treatment paradigms. A gel with 1.7% hydrogen peroxide (Perio Gel®, QNT Anderson LLC, Bismarck ND) tested the best in case and pilot studies, and clinical trials using Perio Tray delivery of peroxide gel showed significant reductions in bacterial loads, bleeding scores and pocket probing depths before SRP and, when combined with SRP, better than SRP alone.
More than 20,000 dental professionals have attended Perio Protect courses and tens of thousands of patients have received prescription Perio Trays since the company’s founding. The Perio Tray has also been endorsed in independent product reviews and has received product awards and recognition dating back to 2006. The company also sponsors the Orkos Award for excellence in case study. More information about the award and its winners is available at www.theorkosaward.com
For offices prescribing Perio Trays, the most recent addition of a CDT insurance code to document Perio Tray prescriptions is a very welcome move, especially for the more than 500 prescribers who wrote to the ADA requesting the code change. New code “5994 periodontal medicament carrier with peripheral seal – laboratory processed” will substantially ease office reports, effective January 2014. Perio Protect recognizes the guidance help of both the Academy of General Dentistry and the ADA Code Maintenance Committee for this addition.
Go to www.PerioProtect.com for further information.