Laser therapy for recurrent aphthous stomatitis: an overview

Objectives To evaluate therapeutic effects of laser therapy on patients with recurrent aphthous stomatitis assessing evidences from previously published systematic reviews. Materials and methods An overview of systematic reviews was conducted based on PRISMA checklist. Search strategies were developed and adapted for six different electronic databases and a gray literature search was also performed. The methodology quality of the included systematic reviews was assessed by the Measurement Tool to Assess the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR 2). Results After a two-step selection, five systematic reviews were included. Methodology quality was considered as a high risk of bias in two systematic reviews, while in the other three were graded as moderate. The systematic reviews' conclusions demonstrated that all included systematics reviews showed positive effects of laser therapy for pain relief, and most of them demonstrated healing improvement. A meta-analysis was not feasible due to heterogeneity in treatments parameters. Conclusions Evidence suggested that laser therapy is an effective tool to treat recurrent aphthous stomatitis; nevertheless, more randomized clinical trials should be conducted to compare different lasers parameters3