Journal of Dentistry and Oral CareJournal of Dentistry and Oral CareJournal of Dentistry and Oral CareJournal of Dentistry and Oral Care2379-1705Ommega Online PublishersNew Jersey, USA3311Research ArticleSurgical removal of mandibular third molars with or without the use of cryotherapy. A single-blinded randomised controlled trialSurgical removal of mandibular third molars with or without the use of cryotherapy. A single-blinded randomised controlled trialMarie KjaergaardLarsen1Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Aalborg University Hospital Denmark 2Department Head Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet Denmark 33D Craniofacial Image Research Laboratory School of Dentistry University of Copenhagen Denmark 4Unit of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Aalborg University Hospital Aalborg Denmark 5Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Aalborg University Hospital DenmarkEditor* E-mail: marie.kjaergaard@rn.dk
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
20212604202171JDO-21-RA-331124032021220420212021Creative Commons Attribution LicenseThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Purpose The aim was to test the null-hypothesis of no difference in pain trismus swelling and quality of life following surgical removal of mandibular third molar SRM3 with 30 minutes of immediate cryotherapy compared with no cryotherapy using clinical assessment visual analogue scale VAS questionnaires and three-dimensional imaging nbsp Methods Thirty-one patients 14 men and 17 female were randomly allocated to cryotherapy test or no cryotherapy control in a split-mouth study design Preoperative measurements included VAS score of pain maximum mouth opening delineation of facial morphology using three-dimensional imaging and oral health impact profile-14 Pain trismus swelling and quality of life were assessed after one day three days seven days and one month respectively Swelling was analysed using superimposition of three-dimensional facial surfaces andtemplate matching technique Descriptive and generalised estimating equation analyses were made Level of significance was 0 05 nbsp Results Thirty minutes of immediate cryotherapy following SRM3 revealed no statistically significant differences in pain trismus swelling or quality of life compared with no cryotherapy Females disclosed significant less pain after one month compared with males P lt 0 05 Trismus was significantly associated with increased length of surgery P lt 0 05 nbsp Conclusion The therapeutic efficiency of cryotherapy following SRM3 seems to be negligible However further randomised controlled trials assessing longer use of cryotherapy or intermittent application are needed before definite conclusions can be provided about the beneficial use of cryotherapy following SRM3 10