A periodontist is a dentist who specializes in periodontics — the dental specialty the National Commission defines as the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the supporting and surrounding tissues of the teeth, or their substitutes (implants among them), plus the maintenance of those tissues.
In practice, that means gum disease and dental implant placement.
Training adds a CODA-accredited residency of at least three consecutive academic years — a minimum of 30 months of instruction — after dental school; board certification is voluntary.
What is a periodontist?
A periodontist is a dentist who specializes in periodontics.
The National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards (NCRDSCB) — the ADA body that recognizes dental specialties — defines periodontics as the specialty covering the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the supporting and surrounding tissues of the teeth or their substitutes, and the maintenance of those tissues (definition adopted May 2018); the "substitutes" include implants.
Periodontics is one of the 12 dental specialties the National Commission recognizes.
In plain terms, the meaning of "periodontist" is the practitioner of the dental specialty concerned with the tissues around and supporting the teeth — gum disease, and the implants that replace missing teeth.
That field is periodontology, covered in the next section.
The accreditation standard behind the training is a floor, not a typical length: the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) requires a periodontics residency to run "three consecutive academic years with a minimum of 30 months of instruction."
The closest published answer to how long programs actually run is an average: the CODA/ADA HPI Survey of Advanced Dental Education put accredited periodontics programs at 35 months on average in 2025-26.
Treat 30 months as the minimum a program cannot go below, not as how long programs typically run.
What is periodontology?
Periodontology is the field behind the title: the dental specialty concerned with the tissues that support and surround the teeth and with the diseases that affect them.
The practitioner is the periodontist.
The field appears under both names in official use — the National Commission's recognized-specialty list calls it periodontics, and the certifying board on its recognized-boards list is named for periodontology (the American Board of Periodontology).
Periodontology and periodontics are, as far as the National Commission's two lists show, names for the same specialty — nothing on either list treats them as two different fields.
The field trains through the CODA-accredited residencies described below, and the American Board of Periodontology provides certification in periodontics and dental implant surgery — see board certification in periodontology for that two-examination process.
As for scale, ADA HPI's Supply of Dentists data counted 5,480 professionally active U.S. dentists holding a certificate or degree in periodontics in 2025 (HPI counts a dentist who holds more than one specialty certificate in each area).
What does a periodontist do day to day?
A periodontist treats periodontal disease — disease of the gums and the bone that supports the teeth — and surgically places dental implants; the specialty's formal definition also includes maintaining those tissues.
The implant half of the work is required by training standard: CODA's periodontics standards require didactic and clinical training in dental implants, including implant site development and the surgical placement of dental implants.
On the disease half, routine gum health sits inside the broad practice BLS describes — most dentists are general practitioners handling a variety of dental needs — and a case beyond routine care, advanced disease or an implant, may be referred to a periodontist.
Implant placement is a live overlap in dentistry rather than a periodontist's exclusive territory: it also sits within oral surgery's required training, and whether it sits within a given general dentist's practice depends on that dentist's individual training and case mix.
This article describes where the work can sit; it doesn't adjudicate which provider is the right choice for a given case.
Between specialty visits, the periodontal maintenance a periodontist's treatment plan calls for may sit with a dental hygienist — hygiene scope and supervision are set state by state.
How you become a periodontist
The path starts with a bachelor's degree — most dental programs require applicants to hold at least one, plus science courses such as biology or chemistry — then dental school for a DDS or DMD, and licensure, which usually requires a degree from an accredited dental program plus written and clinical exams, with requirements varying by state.
The specialty step is a periodontics residency accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA), which must run at least three consecutive academic years with a minimum of 30 months of instruction.
Board certification is voluntary and comes from the American Board of Periodontology, through a written Qualifying Examination and an Oral Examination after completing a CODA-accredited periodontics program — see board certification in periodontology for how that works.
For the broader framework of how CODA accreditation and certifying boards work across all 12 dental specialties, see dental residency & board certification.
For the full step-by-step path, see how to become a periodontist.
How competitive is getting a periodontics residency seat?
Two published sources describe the pipeline: the CODA/ADA HPI 2025-26 survey counted 57 accredited periodontics programs, with 193 first-year residents and 188 graduates in 2025, and the Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program's 2026 results show 296 applicants for 132 periodontics positions, 129 of them matched.
No acceptance rate turns up in the published sources this site checked — see how competitive periodontics residency actually is for both data sets and the caveats that rule a rate out.
Periodontist vs. general dentist, and where the specialty fits
A general dentist provides broad-scope primary oral care — general dentists need no additional training after dental school, per BLS, though New York and Delaware require a residency year for initial licensure — and handles the routine side of periodontal disease within that broad care; a periodontist has completed the additional CODA-accredited residency described above and focuses on gum disease and implant placement.
Periodontics sits alongside prosthodontics among the 12 recognized dental specialties, with endodontics and oral surgery the neighboring specialties.
See periodontist vs. general dentist for how the referral line between the two moves and how the implant overlap works.
To see current openings, browse periodontist jobs.
How much does a periodontist earn?
There's no periodontics-specific federal wage figure: BLS publishes separate national wage series only for general dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthodontists and prosthodontists, and periodontists fall in the catch-all "Dentists, all other specialists" category (SOC 29-1029) as BLS groups them.
That category's median annual wage was $224,990 in May 2025 — a grouped figure across several specialties, not a periodontist wage.
The nearest named-source anchor is ADA HPI's Survey of Dental Practice: its latest published median net income for private-practice periodontists is $295,780, for 2024; the 2025 figure was suppressed for too few observations.
Treat both as directional, and see which dental specialty pays the most, which explains the grouping and ranks the dental SOC codes that do exist side by side.