Pain Perception With Low-level Laser Therapy On Orthodontic Wire Sequences

Objectives: The pain is a multifaceted experience with the extensive treaty. Therefore, the only orthodontic subjects experiencing the treatment can provide the most reliable information. The aim of this study was to explore the pain perception following insertion of orthodontic archwires and to investigate the pain acuity with low-level laser therapy (LLLT) application in self-ligating and conventional bracket systems.

Methods: The randomized controlled clinical trial comprised of 32 subjects, were bonded with fixed orthodontic appliances. The subjects were further grouped (n=8) based on the respected treatment modalities as self-ligating laser (SLL), self-ligating non-laser (SLNL), conventional laser (CBL) and conventional non-laser (CBNL). The pain was recorded based on the wire sequences of .014NiTi, .016NiTi, .017x.025NiTi, .019x.025NiTi until the leveling and alignment stage of orthodontic treatment. To assess the normality of data, the Shapiro–Wilk test was used. Analysis of factorial variance (ANOVA) for repeated measurements was performed to evaluate the pain score of different wire sequence in different treatment modalities up to 7 days of each wire engaged. Post-hoc pairwise test was implemented as a paired t-test with correction according to the Bonferroni test.

Results: Shapiro–Wilk test showed normal distribution of data. Repeated measure ANOVA exhibited that there is a significant difference (p= 0.035*) between the pain scores and .014NiTi arch wire in different treatment modalities. Pairwise comparisons based on the Paired t-test showed significant differences (p= 0.040*) in SLNL and SLL group in .014NiTi arch wire. Nevertheless, in most wire sequences, mean values of SLL and CBL showed less pain score compared to the CBNL and SLNL group.

Conclusions: It might be concluded that the use of low-level therapy can help in relieving pain at initial visits. A single dose of LLLT application might be of great relief for initial pain management in the orthodontic patients.