Adjunctive efficacy of diode laser in the treatment of peri‐implant mucositis with mechanical therapy: A randomized clinical trial

OBJECTIVES: Due to the inconclusive findings on the effect of laser therapy in the management of peri-implant diseases, the aim of this study was to analyze the adjunctive clinical efficacy of 980-nm diode laser (DL) irradiation in the treatment of peri-implant mucositis with mechanical debridement. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Two hundred and twenty patients with one implant diagnosed with peri-implant mucositis (probing depth [PD] ≥ 4 mm and bleeding on probing [BoP] [primary outcome]) were randomly allocated to test and control treatments. Patients in the control group (n = 110) received debridement using curettes and ultrasonic devices, while patients allocated in the test group (n = 110) received mechanical therapy in combination with DL irradiation (setting 980 nm, 2.5 W, 10 kHz, pw, 30 s). BoP, presence of plaque, and PD were recorded at baseline, 1 month, and 3 months after treatment. RESULTS: Both therapeutic modalities yielded similar clinical improvements with comparable reductions in the number of BoP-positive sites, plaque scores, and PD values at 3 months (all p-values > 0.05). Complete disease resolution was obtained in 38/110 (34.5%) implants in the test group compared with 34/110 (30.9%) implants in the control group at the end of the observation period. CONCLUSION: Based on these results, the adjunct use of DL did not yield any statistically significant clinical benefit as compared to nonsurgical mechanical treatment alone in controlling peri-implant inflammation at 3 months.