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Alveolar iodine tampon packing reduces postoperative morbidity after third molar surgery654scores from multiple measurements in the same subjects were compared using ANOVA for repeated measures. Mean scores of two repeated measurements were compared using the paired samples t-test. For skewed data (i.e., number of painkillers), analyses were repeated using the Friedman test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. For the level of significance, an alpha of 5% was used. ResultsData from 54 patients (29 females and 25 males) were available for analysis, with a mean age of 25.1 years (SD 3.9). A total of 25 patients started with surgical removal of the mandibular third molar using the iodine tampon (12 males, 13 females), and the other 29 patients started with surgical removal without the use of a tampon (13 males, 16 females). The chi2 test revealed no significant association between gender and condition (X2 (1) = .05, p = .82), indicating an approximately equal distribution of gender across conditions. Concerning the OHIP-14-data, only 3 values were missing. These missing values were replaced by the mean item score on the respective day of measurement. Using independent-samples t-tests, the two conditions were compared regarding the mean OHIP-14 total scores to test for an order effect. No significant differences were found. Therefore, data were pooled for surgical extraction with and without the iodine tampon.Impact of surgical third molar removalIn order to evaluate the impact of the third molar extraction on OHRQoL and the level of pain felt, several repeated measures ANOVA were carried out comparing the mean scores on each postoperative day, separately for the experimental and control extractions (Table 1). For extraction using the iodine tampon, a significant difference was found between the multiple measurements for the mean OHIP-14 total score (F (6, 318) = 140.04, p < .001) and mean pain intensity scores (F (6, 318) = 105.02, p < .001). Pairwise comparisons showed that all dependent measurements differed significantly from each other (all p<.001) for both outcome measures. For extraction without the use of a tampon, identical results were found, i.e., a significant difference between the multiple measurements for the mean OHIP-14 total score (F (6, 318) = 134.24,