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Photobiomodulation alleviates Burning Mouth Syndrome pain: Immediate and weekly outcomes explored
Ori Finfter1, Layla Kizel2, Rakefet Czerninski1
1Department of Oral Medicine, Sedation and Imaging, Hadassah Medical Center, Faculty of Dental Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Abstract:
Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS) is an intraoral chronic burning or dysesthetic sensation, without clinically evident causative lesions on clinical examination and investigation.
Aim:
To assess immediate and weekly effects of photobiomodulation (PBM) on BMS patients.
Methods:
Thirty BMS patients were treated intra-orally with photobiomodulation 940(±10) nm (InGaAsP) 3 W, semi-conductor diode, weekly, for up to 10 weeks. Pain intensity, measured using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and characteristics were recorded immidiately after each treatment, along with a weekly average VAS.
Results:
Immediate mean VAS score decreased from a starting score of 7.80 ± 1.83 to 2.07 ± 2.55 (p < 0.001). The mean weekly VAS score for the week after the final treatment session was higher (5.73 ± 2.80, p < 0.001) than the immediate response, but still significantly lower than the starting score (p = 0.017). We observed a trend of pain improvement with more treatments, but this was only statistically significant up to the third treatment. Male gender and unilateral pain correlated with better PBM efficacy (p = 0.017, 0.022, respectively).
Conclusion:
PBM provides significant immediate pain relief for BMS patients after each treatment; however, the efficacy decreases notably over the following week. A trend of increasing pain relief across treatments was observed, statistically significant up to the third treatment.
