A Comparative Single Blind Clinical Study on the Effect of Alvogyl, Eugenol, and Nigella Sativa (Black Seed Oil) for Alveolar Osteitis.

Dry socket the unscientific term also known as alveolar or fibrinolytic osteitis is the most common postoperative complication following tooth extraction. Dry socket lesion occur in approximately 1% to 5% of all extraction and up to 38% of mandibular third molar extractions. The etiology of dry socket is not yet fully understood, however the disintegration of the blood clot at the site of the tooth extraction fails to develop i.e. fibrinolysis is widely accepted as the primary mechanism or it dislodges before wound has healed. Various factors have been associated with an increase of dry socket, although some of them remain controversial and many include difficult or traumatic extractions, oral hygiene, smoking, Gender (female), extraction site, previous dry socket history, while incidence can be reduced with the chlorhexidine rinse and gel of alveolar osteitis.

Treatment of Alveolar osteitis can be either pharmacological on non-pharmacological. Management can be by irrigation, surgical intervention and placement of medicated dressing such as topical anti-bacterial, topical anesthetics and obtundants or combination of these three. Out of these Alveogyl is the still the material of choice in terms of pain relief, wound healing and low incidence of dry socket as compared to honey, zinc oxide eugenol and cutanplast , however in some recent studies a mixture of Nigella sativa powder and oil showed that it is more efficacious dressing material for the management of dry socket compared to alvogyl, it provided immediate and complete pain relief and fewer number of repeated visits needed while in some neocane was the most suitable dressing material for the management of dry socket by virtue of shorter time required for the complete pain relief, fewer visits required and faster clinical healing. Based on the previous data, we decided to conduct a study to evaluate the effectiveness of nigella sativa (black seed oil) for the treatment of dry socket compared to alveogyl and eugenol both. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative study of nigella sativa oil for the treatment of dry socket at Oral and maxillofacial surgery department, HITEC dental college, Taxila and is aimed to find the best and effective treatment for dry socket comparing Alveogyl, Eugenol and Black seed oil at this institution.