What’s new for the clinician – summaries of recently published papers

Abstract

Pain is an important physiological and emotional experience, whose intensity may vary with age, gender, emotional state, cultural background and previous pain experience.1 Almost 95% of patients undergoing orthodontic treatment have reported varying degrees of pain. After an orthodontic force is applied, an immediate and a delayed painful response occurs.  While the cause of the immediate response was to be the compression of the periodontal ligament (PDL), the delayed response was attributed to the hyperalgesia of the PDL. This hyperalgesia is associated with prostaglandins which make the PDL sensitive to algogens released in the environment, such as histamine, bradykinin, serotonin and substance.