Preventive effects of an oral rinse Peppermint essence on chemotherapy-induced oral mucosistis

Oral mucositis (OM) is a significant and frequent complication of chemotherapy, which results in delayed or incomplete chemotherapeutic management. This study was conducted to determine the effects of an oral rinse Peppermint essence (PE) in the prevention of chemotherapy- induced OM. In this double blind clinical trial, 40 patients with colon or rectum cancers, who admitted for chemotherapeutic management, randomly divided in two equal placebo and PE groups. PE and placebo groups were received 10 drops of oral rinse PE or placebo, three times a day, from the first day of chemotherapy up to the fourteenth day, respectively. A bipartite questionnaire was used for obtaining demographic and clinical information. The evaluation of OM was measured using the WHO scale. Content and inter-rater methods were used for validity and reliability of tools, respectively (r = 0.93). The incidence of OM between the PE group (15%) and the placebo group (50%) was significantly different (p<0.05). The risk of OM in the placebo group was 3.3 higher than the PE group. Moreover, a significant difference between the grade and incidence time of OM was found between both groups (p<0.05). According to these results, it seems that oral rinse PE is an effective, safe and well-tolerated method for prophylactic treatment of chemotherapy- induced OM.