Felipe Sepúlveda Barra; Ricardo Riquelme Mendoza & Camila Martínez Faundez

Summary

The Communnity Health Center (CESFAM) of San Pedro de Atacama, is the only establishment of health assistance in the community and surroundings, it is imperative for Dental Surgeons to be decisive and deliver an effective solution to local demand. Determinate the prevalence of post-extraction complications of third molars in patients treated at CESFAM San Pedro de Atacama between January and October 2020. Descriptive cross-sectional study between January and October 2020. It has been done a retrospective review of manual clinical records and electronic database of dental care performed at CESFAM. Patients over 18 years old, systemically healthy or compensated ASA II, who had extracted an upper or lower third molar and who had attended a 7-day clinical check-up were included in the study. Were excluded Illegible or no follow up clinical records, patients with a history of pericoronitis up to 7 days previously, and immunocompromised patients. The frequency of postoperative complications was related to the difficulty of the intervention (mild / moderate / high) and whether the tooth was maxillary or mandibular. A descriptive and statistical analysis of the data obtained by Fisher's exact test was carried out to evaluate the association between the variables using the statistical program STATA v. 15. Between January and October 2020, 146 third molar extractions were performed; 61 were of mild difficulty (41.7 %), 58 of moderate difficulty (39.8 %) and 21 of high difficulty (18.5 %). The result of post-extraction complications reached 5.4 % (n = 8), where the most frequent complication was alveolitis. Post-extraction complications are significantly related to the level of mild difficulty (p <0,05), however, no significant differences were observed in more complex surgical procedures (p> 0,05).

KEY WORDS: prevalence, third molar, complications, oral surgery.

How to cite this article

SEPÚLVEDA, B. F.; RIQUELME, M. R. & MARTÍNEZ, F. C. Prevalence of post-extraction complications of third molars. Int. J. Odontostomat., 17(3):224-228, 2023.