Comparing the immediate quality of life using complete closure and non-closure techniques in third molar surgery

Background: Surgical extraction of the impacted mandibular third molar is associated with intraoperative and postoperative complications, subsequently affecting the patient's wellbeing and reducing the quality of life especially in the week following surgery. Quality of life records are better outcome parameters than clinical variables because it assesses multiple aspects of life. The wound closure technique is an operative factor reported to affect the severity of postoperative complications. If these affectation would translate into any difference in the overall quality of life is yet to be studied. Therefore, there was need to compare the quality of life of two widely varied techniques - the complete closure and the non-closure (sutureless). This wa Methods: s a prospective, randomised clinical study carried out at the Dental and Maxillofacial Surgery department of a tertiary hospital from December 2019 to November 2020. Seventy-four participants were randomized into a complete closure group and a sutureless technique group. They were subjected to the procedure under similar conditions and thereafter followed up for 1 week to assess the changes in their quality of life using the modied OHIP-14 questionnaire. Variables were recorded and analysed using the SPSS (v 25.0). The critical level of signicance was set at P<0.05. There was no statistically signicant Results: difference in the overall QoL changes (p<0.05) although the sutureless technique had less affectation in the speaking domain. There Conclusion: was no statistically signicant difference in quality of life between complete closure and sutureless techniques following impacted mandibular third molar extraction.