Gingival Blood Vessels in Smokers and Nonsmokers: A Scoping Review

Smoking is an independent risk factor for periodontal disease. Despite the severity of periodontal disease, smokers demonstrated reduced clinical signs of inflammation in gingivitis and periodontitis. The present review analyzed the gingival blood vessels between smokers and nonsmokers to obtain a more comprehensive overview. A scoping review was conducted based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Review guidelines, according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria that have been set. Articles were retrieved from five databases: PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. The article searches were performed using keywords ((smoke OR smoking) AND (gingival vessel OR gingival vascular OR gingival microvasculature OR gingival vascularity OR gingival blood vessel OR gingival flow)). From an initial pool of 217 articles, 10 were ultimately chosen for detailed analysis. This selection encompassed seven cross-sectional studies, two case–control studies, and one experimental study. According to the articles that have been reviewed, there were differences in gingival blood vessel density between smokers and nonsmokers in different periodontal conditions, namely, healthy periodontal tissue, gingivitis, and periodontitis. The differences were more pronounced when smokers had gingivitis and periodontitis compared with nonsmokers with the same diseases. Assessment of blood vessel distribution showed that small and medium-sized vessels were more prevalent in smokers, while large vessels were more common in nonsmokers. Additionally, the lumen of blood vessels in smokers was narrower compared with nonsmokers.