Surgical removal of impacted teeth is one of the most common procedures performed by oral and maxillofacial surgeons. It involves the manipulation of both hard and soft tissue that can cause several postoperative complications. Pain, swelling, trismus is the most commonest postoperative (post op) discomforts that affects post- operative quality of patient’s life following the surgical removal of mandibular third molar.
Flap design and incision is one of the factors influencing the severity of these complications. The incision of the mucosa, the reflection of a mucoperiosteal flap and the surgical time are the general factors related to post operative complications and therefore they should be reduced to improve the post operative quality of the life of the patient.
Scalpel, electrocautery and laser system are commonly utilized as effective tool in soft tissue surgeries. The most common tool is scalpel. The main drawback of the scalpel is that they do not provide haemostasis, which is an important key factor in the highly vascularised region like oral cavity. Therefore, there arises a need for an alternative for the soft tissue surgeries.
Laser is a monochromatic, collimated, coherent, and intense beam of light produced by stimulated emission of radiation of light source. Benefits of laser incision over scalpel are as follows:
- Laser incision provides excellent accessibility and visibility to the surgical site at the time of surgical procedure.
- Time required for performing surgery-using Laser incision is less as compared to scalpel incision.
- The Laser incision proved to be least affecting the post-operative mouth opening, swelling.
- Post-operative mouth opening, post-operative swelling and post- operative wound healing was affected more adversely with the use of scalpel incision while these parameters were least adversely affected with the use of laser incision.
- Postoperative wound healing is excellent followed by incision with Laser.
- Intra operative bleeding is highly reduced by the use of lasers.
Several trials have been used to prevent the occurrence of these complications by alteration in the surgical operative technique and reducing trauma as possible, by the administration of local or systemic corticosteroids and anti-inflammatory drugs, different types of incisions and Laser therapy.
It can be concluded that incision with lasers is more preferred when compared to scalpel incision considering its influence on post operative complications during surgical removal of teeth.
The dental department of Sakra world hospital is well equipped with recent advances in laser technology where patients can avail this benefit of laser incision during extraction procedure.
