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                                    Chapter 7138should refrain from taking analgesics; however, as pointed out by Seymour et al., this approach would be unethical [3]. The NRS pain score exhibited a significant gender difference in the first 3 days, with women experiencing more pain, but this did not affect the OHRQoL. The mean differences in OHIP-14 score were not significantly different between males and females; however, the slightly higher pain with less impact on OHRQoL observed in women may be explained by women being better at managing pain than men [22]. Therefore, the OHIP-14 score may reflect the notion that pain did not hinder day-to-day life in women as much as it did in men [22]. Interestingly, Penarrocha et al. [8] found higher pain scores for males after periapical surgery until the third postoperative day,whereas other studies reported no significant differences in pain scores between males and females after apical surgery [3, 5-6].In the present study, the younger age group (<25 years) experienced a greater effect of periapical surgery during the first 2 days and more pain during the first postoperative day. This finding is in contrast to other studies that did not find any significant effect of age on postoperative symptoms after periapical surgery [3,5-6,9-10]. However, Iqbal et al. found more postoperative discomfort in younger patients [11].In the present study, ibuprofen was used as an analgesic in younger patients and paracetamol in the ASA II group and older patients. No significant differences were found in the use of analgesics between gender, age groups, smokers or non-smokers, flap design, or location. In the present study, 85.7% of the patients reported using analgesics on the first postoperative day. This decreased during the week and, on the seventh postoperative day, 23.3% of the patients used analgesics. Earlier studies reported that 63-67% of the patients took analgesics, which meant that some patients did not take them even though pain was reported [4,7].Surgical operation time, ASA classification, and flap design did not significantly impact OHRQoL and NRS pain scores during the first postoperative week. Seymour et al. also failed to find a correlation between operating time and postoperative pain. Studies have reported great variety in operation time, 
                                
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