Novel index for the evaluation of wound healing following erupted tooth extraction.

Objectives: Understanding healing of the alveolar process is crucial for immediate implant, alveolar ridge preservation and guided bone regeneration procedures. Several different scales have been proposed to evaluate tissue healing after tooth extraction, but none seem to provide an objective evaluation of multiple factors with dichotomous scores (0-1) providing an overall score for the different stages of healing: the objective of the present study is to propose and apply a novel index for the evaluation of wound healing following erupted tooth extraction which would allow clinicians to properly monitor the results of oral surgery procedures.

Methods: Healthy patients in need of a single tooth extraction were enrolled and re-examined at 7, 14 and 21 days after the extraction using the novel index proposed and obtaining, for each follow-up, a score from 0 to 10 based on dichotomous factors (0-1).

Results: 10 patients were enrolled in the study, 7 females and 3 males; the scores obtained at 21 days were coherent with the clinical appearance of the wound, and an excellent wound healing was obtained for everyone, except for two patients in which a good wound healing was obtained due to alveolitis.

Conclusions: the proposed scale seems to accurately indicate the actual clinical status of the post-extraction wound and provide useful information on overall wound healing. Further validation of the scale and an higher number of participants is needed in future studies.