Comparison Between Efficacy of Transdermal Ketoprofen and Diclofenac Patch in Patients Undergoing Therapeutic...

Postoperative pain control is a significant aspect of patient treatment after an oral and maxillofacial surgical procedure. The use of a transdermal patch is one such method to provide postoperative analgesia. The present study was undertaken to investigate the efficacy of a single-dose transdermal patch of ketoprofen compared with that of diclofenac postoperatively after therapeutic extraction of first premolar teeth for patients undergoing orthodontic treatment.

A split mouth randomized clinical trial was conducted of 40 patients aged 15 to 25 years who had required therapeutic extraction of both maxillary and mandibular first premolar teeth bilaterally. A single ketoprofen patch was applied for the first and fourth quadrant extraction, and diclofenac patch was applied for the second and third quadrant extraction after atraumatic therapeutic exodontia at 2 consecutive appointments with the patient under local anesthesia. The data were obtained and analyzed using the Student t test and Shapiro-Wilk test using SPSS software (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY).

All 40 patients who had received a single-dose ketoprofen patch had experienced less postoperative pain and did not require a rescue analgesic with a mean visual analog scale (VAS) score of 1.13 ± 0.335 (P < .00001). The patients who had received a diclofenac patch reported comparatively elevated pain scores in the initial 24 hours, with a mean VAS score of 2.0 ± 0.5064 postoperatively, and 20% of the diclofenac treatment arm had required a rescue analgesic. No complications were observed among the patients postoperatively in either treatment arm.

Both the ketoprofen and diclofenac transdermal patches were effective in achieving postoperative analgesia in patients after therapeutic extraction, with ketoprofen superior to diclofenac as a transdermal medicament.