ABSTRACT
The goal of this study was to evaluate the incidence of postoperative wound infection and timing of mandibular third molar removal in bilateral sagittal split osteotomy (BSSO). This wis a prospective, single-blinded, randomized, split-mouth clinical trial. All patients were divided into two groups: Group I, where pre-operative removal of the third molars were done 6 months prior to BSSO and Group II, where intra-operative removal of contralateral third molars were done for the same patients during the osteotomy. The primary outcome variable studied was postoperative infection rate and the secondary outcome variable was bad split during BSSO. Among the seventy five patients (150 sites), one site in group II developed infection whereas none of the sites in group I developed infection (p = 1.000). No sites had bad split in both the groups. The results from the present study show that there is no difference between the presence or absence of mandibular third molars on post-operative wound infection following bilateral sagittal split osteotomy, and the authors hence suggest removing third molars during BSSO for patient comfort.
