Hemostasis and Post-operative Care of Oral Surgical Wounds by Hemcon Dental Dressing in Patients on Oral Anticoagulant Therapy: A Split Mouth Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial.

INTRODUCTION: Hemostasis is a fundamental management issue post-operatively in minor oral surgical procedures. To ensure safety and therapeutic efficacy in patients, under oral anti coagulant therapy, is complicated by necessity for frequent determination of prothrombin time or international normalised ratio.

AIM: The aim of the study was to determine whether early hemostasis achieved by using Hemcon Dental Dressing (HDD) will affect post-operative care and surgical healing outcome in minor oral surgical procedures.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 30 patients, aged 18 years to 90 years, except those allergic to seafood, who consented to participate, were enrolled into this study. Patients were required to have two or more surgical sites so that they would have both surgical and control sites. All patients taking Oral Anticoagulation Therapy (OAT) were included for treatment in the study without altering the anticoagulant regimens. Institutional Review Board approval was obtained for the same. The collected data was subjected to statistical analysis using unpaired t-test.

RESULTS: All HDD surgically treated sites achieved hemostasis in 1.49 minutes and control wounds in 4.06 minutes (p < 0.001). Post-operative pain at HDD treated sites (1.87,1.27 on 1(st) and 3(rd) day respectively) was significantly lower than the control sites (4.0,1.87 on 1(st) and 3(rd) day respectively) p-value (0.001, 0.001 respectively). HDD treated oral surgery wounds achieved statistically significant improved healing both at 1(st) and 3(rd) post-operative days (p <0.0001).

CONCLUSION: The HDD has been proven to be a clinically effective hemostatic dressing material that significantly shortens bleeding time following minor oral surgical procedures under local anaesthesia, including those patients taking OAT. Patients receiving the HDD had improved surgical wound healing as compared to controls.