Clinical study on the efficacy of LED phototherapy for pain control in an orthodontic procedure

Pain is an unpleasant and emotional subjective sensory experience that occurs during orthodontic procedures. Currently, LED phototherapy is an alternative to the use of laser light as analgesic agent due to similarity of response and lower cost. This case-control, quantitative, qualitative, and long...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lasers in medical science 2019-04, Vol.34 (3), p.479-485
Main Authors: Figueira, I. Z., Sousa, A. P. C, Machado, A. W, Habib, F. A. L., Soares, L. G. P., Pinheiro, A. L. B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analgesics
Correlation analysis
Dental occlusion
Dentistry
Insertion
Lasers
Light emitting diodes
Light therapy
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Optical Devices
Optics
Original Article
Orthodontics
Pain
Patients
Photonics
Phototherapy
Quantum Optics
Separators
Teeth
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Summary:Pain is an unpleasant and emotional subjective sensory experience that occurs during orthodontic procedures. Currently, LED phototherapy is an alternative to the use of laser light as analgesic agent due to similarity of response and lower cost. This case-control, quantitative, qualitative, and longitudinal study aimed to investigate the effect of IR LED phototherapy (λ846 ± 20 nm) in pain during the process of tooth separation during orthodontic treatment. After approval by the Institution Ethics Committee, 40 patients (30 female/10 male, 20–30 years old, average age 24.5 ± 2.6 years old) fulfilling the inclusion criteria entered the study and received a set of four visual analog scales (VAS) for scoring pain immediately, 48 h, 72 h, and 7 days after the insertion of the separating elastics. The patients were randomly distributed into two groups (experimental and control). The patients of experimental group received LED phototherapy (180 mW, 22 s, 4 J, 8 J/cm 2 , 0.36 W/cm 2 , spot of 0.5 cm 2 , spot diameter 0.8 cm) at the same times in which VAS was performed, and control patients were not irradiated. It was found that, in both groups, there was an increase in pain 48 h after insertion of the elastic tooth separator, decreasing 72 h after its installation and reached the lowest level of pain after 7 days. Comparison between groups showed that pain level in the LED group was always statistically significantly lower ( p  
ISSN:0268-8921
1435-604X
DOI:10.1007/s10103-018-2617-3