Objectives: To assess the degree of post-operative pain and functional complications (speech and chewing) following three frenectomy techniques (conventional, electrocautery and laser). Methodology: Sixty subjects diagnosed with aberrant frenal attachment were included in the study and randomly divided into three groups, namely Group A (conventional technique, Sample size-20), Group B (electrocautery, Sample size- 20) and Group C (laser, Sample size- 20). VAS ratings for pain and discomfort (on speaking and chewing), Healing Index (Landry, Turnbull and Hawley, 1988), swelling (present or absent) and number of analgesics used, were assessed at 1 week, 2 weeks and 1 month.
Results: Intragroup changes in the healing index and VAS scores over a period of 1 month was analyzed using Friedman’s ANOVA followed by post hoc Wilcoxan Signed Rank test. Intergroup differences were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA. On intergroup comparison, there was no statistically significant difference among the changes in VAS scores for pain (p = 0.056), difficulty in chewing (p = 0.856) and speaking (p = 0.259) between the 3 groups. There was no statistically significant difference in the post-operative swelling between the 3 groups (p = 0.765). The number of analgesics consumed after conventional frenectomy were significantly higher as compared to the other 2 groups (p <0.001). Also, there was no statistically significant difference in the change in healing index scores at 2 weeks (p = 0.355) and at 1 month (p = 0.707) between the 3 groups.
Conclusion: In the present study, post-operative pain and functional complications (speech and chewing) after three frenectomy techniques were comparable. However, laser showed promising results.
