Photobiomodulation alleviates Burning Mouth Syndrome pain: Immediate and weekly outcomes explored.

UNLABELLED

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.