Page 48 - Demo

Chapter 346branches of the greater palatine nerve, treating the second injection insertion point of the palatal mucosa, just posterior to the second maxillary molar. For mandibular third molar extractions, the first irradiated site targeted the buccal nerve, treating the first injection insertion site at the buccal mucosa. The second irradiated site targeted the inferior alveolar nerve, treating the second needle insertion site on the mucosa, between the deepest part of the coronoid notch just lateral to the pterygomandibular raphe. In both the maxillary and mandibular LLLT irradiation protocols, the two target sites were continuously irradiated for 30 s each, and each target site was irradiated twice in sequence, for a total irradiation time of 2 min (30 s interval between site irradiations); a total of 135 J/cm2 or 11.88 J was delivered to each preinjection site. Directly following LLLT irradiation, the Nexus-10 was activated to initiate data acquisition. After pretreatment with the LLLT the OMFS was signaled to enter the room to perform the injections. During data acquisition, a digital marker was dropped to identify at least four observed time-points: the surgeon’s entry into the treatment room, the start of the injections, the end of the injections, and when the surgeon exited the treatment room. After the surgeon left the room, the patients were asked to complete the third part of the questionnaire. All data acquisition and analysis was performed by two investigators (IM and ZK).Statistical analysisPower analysis, using an independent-samples, alpha 5%, power 80%, twotailed testing and a medium effect size (0.5), resulted in a total required sample size of 128.We used the Mann-Whitney U test to compare ordinal data from the two groups. Independent samples t-tests were used to analyze quantitative numerical variables. The Pearson correlation was used as a measure of linear association. The level of significance was set at alpha 0.05.