[A 2-year follow-up clinical study on the multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment of burning mouth syndrome]

Objective: To investigate the clinical effects of multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment on patients with burning mouth syndrome (BMS) in pain, anxiety, depression, and sleep status, providing additional clinical evidence for developing effective BMS diagnosis and treatment regimens. Methods: This prospective self-controlled study enrolled 40 BMS patients from Periodontics and Oral Medicine Department of Hospital of Stomatology, Guangxi Medical University between January and October 2023. Assessments were conducted using the visual analogue scale (VAS), self-rating anxiety scale (SAS), self-rating depression scale (SDS), and Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI). Each patient received multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment, consisting of oryzanol-vitamin B₂-vitamin E supplementation combined with psychological counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy, for 1 to 2 months. After a 2-year follow-up, pain, anxiety, depression, and sleep status before and after treatment were recorded and compared. Paired t-tests (for normally distributed data) or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests (for skewed data) were used to compare quantitative measures between pre- and post-treatment groups. Spearman rank correlation analysis was applied to examine correlations among changes in scale scores. Results: Among BMS patients, 92.5% (37/40) were females, with a mean age of (56.10±8.02) years, median education duration of 5.00 (3.00) years, and median disease duration of 12.00 (15.75) months. After 1-2 months of comprehensive treatment, the oral symptom cure rate was 30.0% (12/40), the improvement rate was 45.0% (18/40), and the total effective rate was 75.0% (30/40) in the 2-year follow-up. The VAS, SAS, SDS, and PSQI scores before and after treatment were 5.00 (3.00) vs. 2.00 (3.00), 42.50 (15.63) vs. 35.63 (11.25), 44.66±12.15 vs. 37.50 (11.88), and 8.48±3.86 vs. 7.00 (5.50), respectively. At the 2-year follow-up, pain, anxiety, depression, and sleep scores were all significantly lower than those before treatment (all P<0.05). Conclusions: Multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment for BMS can effectively alleviate its pain symptoms, relieve anxiety, depression and improve sleep conditions.