Experience versus complication rate in third molar surgery

Seven surgeons (three specialists in surgical dentistry [specialists SD] and four oral and maxillofacial Senior House Officers [OMFS residents]) carried out the surgical procedures. For each patient, several variables were recorded including age, gender, radiographic position of extracted teeth, treating surgeon, duration of surgery and postoperative complications.Analysis of the data revealed some differences in the incidence of complications produced by the specialists SD and OMFS residents. The main statistically relevant differences were increase the incidences of trismus, nerve paraesthesia, alveolar osteitis and infection in the resident-treated group, while the specialist-treated group showed higher rates of post-operative bleeding.The higher rate of postoperative complications in the resident-treated group suggests that at least some of the complications might be related to surgical experience.Further work needs to compare specialists of training programmes with different years of experience, using large cross – sectional studies.Dentoalveolar surgery and especially surgical removal of third molar teeth continues to be the most common surgical procedure performed in the speciality of oral & maxillofacial surgery.The surgical removal of third molar teeth may result in a number of complications including pain, swelling, bleeding, alveolar osteitis (dry socket) or nerve dysfunction [1]. The factors that usually contribute to such problems are numerous and include the patient, tooth-related and the surgeon's operative experience [2].Although careful attention to surgical details, including proper patient preparation, asepsis, meticulous management of hard and soft tissue, controlled force when applying surgical instruments, haemostasis and adequate post operative instructions may help to reduce this rate of complications it has not been proven to eliminated them. Other parameters found to affect the complication rate include age [3], gender [4], and the surgeon'