Pain Experience with Micro-osteoperforations during Initial Orthodontic Alignment: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Resumo

Objetive: The objective of this clinical trial was to investigate the perception of pain during initial maxillary alignment with an adjunctive procedure of micro-osteoperforations (MOPs) compared to conventional orthodontics. Material and methods: This study design was a single-centre, two-arm parallel prospective randomised clinical trial. Thirty consecutive adult subjects (25 females and 5 males; mean age ± SD, 22.66 ± 3.27 years) with 5-8mm moderate upper labial segment crowding were randomly allocated using block randomisation into intervention and control group. All subjects had first premolar extractions, bonded conventional fixed appliances and 0.014-inch nickel-titanium archwire was placed for initial alignment. The intervention group received a 3-mm deep MOPs procedure under local anaesthesia using a Propel device (PROPEL Ortho Singapore) on the labiogingival aspect between the maxillary incisors. Both groups received a set of 100 mm visual analogue scale to complete over the first week, recording pain at 24 hours, 3 days and 1 week. Data were analysed using repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA).  Results: There was a statistically significant difference observed in perceived pain levels between MOPs and the control group on day 1, day 3 and day 7 postoperatively. Pain perception was significantly lower in the intervention group at all time points.  Conclusion: Accelerating orthodontic tooth movement with MOPs did not accentuate pain perceived during initial maxillary alignment with fixed appliances.