Page 141 - Demo

Effect of periapical surgery on oral health-related quality of life1397from a mean of 25 minutes to a time of 140 minutes for a single rooted tooth [3,8,12,14]. However, no significant correlation between operation time and postoperative pain and swelling were found. Penarrocha et al. found that trapezoidal flaps caused greater pain than triangular flaps, particularly in the first 2 days [8]. We found that smokers had a significantly higher OHIP-14 score on the first postoperative day than non-smokers. In addition, smokers experienced significantly more pain during the first 3 days. Garcia et al. also found that smokers experienced greater pain throughout almost the entire first postoperative week [10]. In the present study, the operation site had no significant influence on postoperative OHRQoL or pain. This finding is in agreement with other studies [5-6, 8, 12, 14].One would expect more postoperative discomfort after periapical surgery in second molars, but we found no significant effect in regard to the postoperative OHRQoL or pain scores. Other studies have found greater pain after periapical surgery of maxillary anterior teeth [11], molars [9], or the lower incisors and canines [8]. Swelling is common following surgical periapical treatment. In the present study, swelling was significantly different between genders on postoperative days 1 and 4, with women reporting more swelling. Postoperative swelling persisted longer in mandibular locations and was significant on days 5, 6, and 7. Previous reports found that the maximum swelling is experienced on the first postoperative day [4, 11] and patients were more likely to experience swelling than pain [11]. Garcia et al. [10] reported that 40.3% of their patients had no or only mild postoperative swelling on the first postoperative day, whereas Tsesis et al. [5] found that 64.7% of their patients did not report any swelling; however, patients in that study received dexamethasone, which influences the postoperative outcome with regard to swelling. We found that limitations in mouth opening were significantly more common in females on the first postoperative day and in the ASA I group on the third postoperative day. A significant difference in mouth opening was also found on days 2, 3, and 4 for teeth surgically treated in the lower jaw. Swelling, chewing, and phonetic impairment were the worst 1 and 2 days after surgery [8, 14].