Is prophylactic antibiotic effective in lower third molar surgery? : article analysis

Abstract

Objective: To justify the use of antibiotic prophylaxis in third molar surgery Materials and methods: The search through electronic data base restricted to the previous articles published in English focusing on two keywords ‘third molar surgery’ and ‘antibiotic prophylaxis’ was performed. Randomized controlled trials complied with the inclusion criteria were reviewed and analyzed descriptively. Results: There were 37 randomized controlled trials included in this study. The evaluation demonstrated that there were 50% of the previous studies showed statistically signifi cant difference between use and no use of antibiotics on the reduction of post-operative infection complications. The pre-operative prophylactic antibiotic was more effective than post-operative antibiotics administration in decreasing the undesirable post-operative infection. Conclusion: The antibiotic prophylaxis seems to show effectiveness in reducing post-operative infection by providing pre-operative high-dose antibiotics with two to fi ve days post-operative administration.