What’s new for the clinician? - Excerpts from and summaries of recently published papers

Abstract

Surgical removal of impacted 3rd molars is a common surgical procedure carried out by both general and specialist oral health professionals. This procedure is often associated with postoperative pain, swelling and bleeding which affects the patients eating and speaking and oral health related quality of life. Very little published studies have investigated the effect of postoperative follow-up on the quality of life of affected patients. Traditional postoperative follow-up via telephone has proven to be effective and it has effects such as reducing the cost of consultation compared with conventional on-site follow-up. However, in clinical practice, telephone follow-up was found to greatly increase the time consumption of doctors and nurses, as they have to repeat the same instructions or guidelines, and patients often reject the calls, as they think that these unknown incoming calls are harassing calls. The increase in online medical care facilitates patients’ access to medical services and also enables doctors to manage their cases more efficiently and follow up with their registered patients quickly and accurately to obtain important clinical data. Zheng and colleagues form China (2021) used the Good Doctor Online mobile app to follow up registered patients after tooth extraction. The primary aim of their study was to evaluate the effectiveness of postoperative online follow-up on patients’ quality of life following impacted mandibular third molar removal. A further objective was to investigate the application value of online medical care in the field of oral therapy.