Background and Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a single preoperative dose of deflazacort on pain, swelling, and trismus after impacted lower third molar surgery. Materials and Methods: This randomised, prospective, double-blind, split-mouth clinical study included 26 healthy individuals with bilaterally impacted lower third molars. Group 1 was given a placebo (single-dose vitamin C tablet), and group 2 was given a single 30 mg dose of deflazacort 1 h prior to surgery. Pain was evaluated using the visual analogue scale for 1 week postoperatively. Oedema (in mm) and trismus (in mm) were evaluated preoperatively and on postoperative days 2 and 7. The Mann–Whitney U test was applied for group analyses. p values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Postoperative pain scores were significantly lower in the deflazacort group at the 6th and 12th hours after surgery (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences in trismus between the groups at any time point (p > 0.05). There was less oedema in the deflazacort group on postoperative days 2 and 7, without any statistically significant difference (p > 0.05). Conclusions: A single preoperative dose of 30 mg deflazacort was found to be clinically effective in reducing pain and oedema after extraction of impacted lower third molars.

This study proposes an artificial intelligence-based method for the detection and semantic segmentation of C2, C3, and C4 cervical vertebrae in lateral cephalometric radiographs. The dataset comprises 2520 radiographs obtained from the Orthodontics Department of Van Yüzüncü Yıl University Faculty of Dentistry. In the initial stage, vertebral regions were identified using YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 object detection models, and these areas were meticulously annotated using QuPath software. The labelled data were then subjected to segmentation using advanced deep learning models such as Attention-UNet, Attention-ResUNet, SEEA-UNet, and ResAt-UNet. The study revealed that the object detection models achieved a high performance with an accuracy of 99.8%. Among the segmentation models, Attention-ResUNet demonstrated the best performance with an accuracy of 99.25%, while the ResAt-UNet model stood out with its balanced generalization capacity. The generated binary masks provided a reliable dataset for bone age estimation and skeletal maturity analysis. This study aims to reduce radiation exposure and streamline clinical workflows by eliminating the need for additional imaging. The findings indicate that AI-supported methods minimize errors caused by manual assessments and ensure standardization in skeletal analysis. It is anticipated that these methods could be widely utilized in orthodontic and pediatric medical applications in the future.

Background and Objectives: The complications seen after lower impacted third molar surgery affect the quality of life of the patients. The aim of the study was to investigate the efficacy of a single preoperative dose of deflazacort on pain, swelling and trismus following impacted lower third molar surgery. Materials and Methods: This randomised, prospective, double-blind, split-mouth clinical study included 30 healthy individuals with bilaterally impacted lower third molars that was removed for orthodontic purposes between September 2017 and September 2018. Group 1 was given a placebo (single dose vitamin C tablet) and group 2 was given a single 30 mg dose of deflazacort 1 hour prior to the surgery. Pain was evaluated using the visual analog scale for 1 week postoperatively. Edema (in mm) and trismus (in mm) were evaluated preoperatively and on postoperative days 2 and 7. The Mann-Whitney U test was applied for group analysis. p values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: When postoperative pain scores were evaluated, a significant difference was found between the groups only at the 6th and 12th hours (p0.05). Even high trismus values were recorded on the 2nd day, it was observed that the trismus resolved on the 7th day. There were no significant differences in trismus between the groups at any time point (p>0.05). Evaluation of swelling showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the study and control groups at any time point (p>0.05). No side effect was detected in both the study and the control groups. Conclusions: This was the first split-mouth study evaluating the anti-inflammatory effect of deflazacort after lower impacted third molar surgery. A single dose of 30 mg deflazacort was shown to be effective in reducing pain at 6 and 12 hours postoperatively.

Orthodontics,bracket systems,external apical root resorption