13th World Congress for Laser Dentistry

26-28, April 2012

Barcelona, Spain

Meeting Abstract

Sponsors: World Federation for Laser Dentistry

-  Poster 102

TITLE: HLLT vs LLLT in the treatment of oral mucositis related to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.

AUTHORS: Ottaviani G, Gobbo M, Pieri G, Zacchigna D, Di Lenarda R, Biasotto M.

Division of oral medicine and pathology, Ospedale Maggiore, Trieste

SOURCE: Med Oral Patol Oral Cir Bucal. 2012 May 1;17(Supplement1):S250.

* doi:10.4317/medoral.17643750

http://dx.doi.org/10.4317/medoral.17643750

Abstract

Introduction: Oral Mucositis (OM) due can be painful and unbearable. Many studies have focused on the efficacy of LLLT to manage OM. However, HLLT has never been tested before nor compared to LLLT. Moreover protocols are still not standardized.

Aim of the study: to evaluate the efficacy of HLLT on radio and/or chemotherapy induced OM and to compare it to LLLT.

Materials and methods: 44 patients were treated with LLLT and 16 with HLLT. Both protocols consisted of 4 laser sessions, repeated twice-a-day on consecutive days and of 3 once-a-week follow ups. OM was evaluated through CTC and VA scales, and “subjective parameters” were registered daily. A statistical analysis was conducted to compare the protocols (SPSS 8.0 software).

Results: all patients showed a decrease in the dimension of lesions and in pain related to them. Both LLLT and HLLT showed effectiveness, no differences were found between the two protocols according to daily progression of healing and decreasing of pain, but OM recorded shorter duration in HLLT treated patients (p<0.001).

Conclusion: since many studies support the idea that laser therapy is effective in healing OM, a great effort should be put on its optimization. In fact, we strongly believe that therapy should address the minimization of both duration and pain related to it. This is an original study about HLLT: while stating the superiority of HLLT to LLLT, it represents a solid starting point to further investigations about this new protocol.