High Intensity Lasers in Periodontics: A Review

Lasers can serve as a new powerful tool in dentistry. High intensity laser therapy is becoming the treatment of choice compared with conventional periodontal therapy due to accurate incision and soft and hard tissue ablation, hemostasis, reduction of postoperative pain and infection, optimal debridement, and enhanced healing. Although high intensity laser therapy assumes to provide better results compared with conventional treatments, a significant variation exists in the applied laser parameters such as different wavelengths and energy densities of laser. The objective of this study was to collect preliminary information about the type and parameters of surgical lasers and how to use them technically based on the available literature on this topic.

After initial screening of 152 potentially relevant articles identified through an electronic search, 44 articles were selected based on the eligibility criteria by three independent reviewers. The inclusion criteria included studies on the outcomes of periodontal high intensity laser therapy in humans published in English between 2013 and 2021 in journals indexed in PubMed Central, Science Direct, Wiley Online Library, Springer or Google Scholar.

The results showed that diode, Nd:YAG, Er:YAG, Er;Cr:YAG and CO2 lasers had the highest efficacy for frenectomy, gingivectomy,  and osteotomy with specific wavelength, power density, frequency, and pulse mode. Various lasers have been suggested for the abovementioned purposes, and the method of choice depends on the efficacy and availability of laser.

This study confirmed higher efficacy of different laser types compared with conventional treatments.