Pain and Health-Related Quality of Life After Oral Soft Tissue Surgical Intervention: the Advantages of the Nd:YAG Laser

The new technology such as the neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (nd:yag) laser has been used for oral soft tissue surgery. previous study shown that laser surgery resulted in lower morbidity and complication rates. objective: this study aims to evaluate the differences in the post-operative course associated to the use of nd:yag laser and to cold blade after oral soft tissue surgery. methods: one-hundred and eighteen comparable surgical interventions were evaluated. group 1 (g1) included 77 interventions performed with nd:yag laser; group 2 (g2) 41 with cold blade. acute post-operative pain was evaluated with visual analogue scale (vas), numeric rating scale (nrs) and verbal rating scale-6 (vrs-6) on the same day of surgery, and at 1, 3 and 7 days after surgery. the hrqol was evaluated on day 7 using a 0-45 score range questionnaire. data were analyzed using the software stata 12 (statacorp lp, college station, texas, usa). results: no statistically significant differences could be highlighted in vas and nrs scores. the vrs-6 scores resulted statistically significant at days 1 and 3. at day 1, 47.14% of patients in g1 and 13.16% in g2 had no pain; at day 3, 62.86% in g1 and 21.05% in g2 had no pain. the hrqol in g1 was statistically higher than g2. conclusion: the better hrqol and the lower post-operative pain observed in laser-treated patients may be associated to the possible bio-modulating effect of the laser.