Evaluation of patient perception and intraoperative bleeding in labial frenectomy: A comparision of diode laser and conventional scalpel techniques

: High frenal attachments are abnormalities corrected by surgical procedure called frenectomies. The scalpel technique is associated with pain, bleeding and postoperative discomfort. To overcome these shortcomings, in the recent times, diode lasers are gaining popularity due to less bleeding, pain during the procedure, healing outcome, and need for analgesics: To compare the bleeding during the procedure and postoperative pain in patients requiring labial frenectomy using conventional scalpel and diode laser techniques. Twenty patients with high labial frenum attachment requiring frenectomy were included in this study. Patients were randomly divided into Group A: scalpel group and Group B: diode laser group. Pain assessment using VAS, severity of intraoperative bleeding and number of analgesics used were recorded: The analysis showed that VAS score for pain was significantly lower in the laser group as compared to the scalpel group Bleeding was mild in laser group, where as in scalpel group showed moderate or severe bleeding scores Post operative use of analgesics was more in scalpel group than laser group Laser was found to be an effective alternate to scalpel in performing frenectomy procedures, more importantly it showed less bleeding, less pain perception and more patient acceptance during the procedure.