A Retrospective Evaluation of Intra- and Post-Operative Complications after Wisdom Tooth Surgery : A comparison between dental students and oral surgeons

Background: Wisdom tooth surgery is one of the most common dentoalveolar surgical procedure carried out by dentists to remove impacted wisdom teeth. Complications may occur during or after all different types of surgical procedures. At the dentistry program at Umeå University, the students in the 8th term perform operative extraction of a mandibular wisdom tooth under the guidance of an oral surgeon. Although this has been a part of the dental students clinical training for some time, there is no evaluation of the rate of complications that might occur after surgery performed by students. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine if a difference in frequencies and type of complications is present when the operative procedure is carried out by dental students or by oral surgeons. Methods: A retrospective study including data of 74 cases that underwent wisdom tooth surgery done by oral surgeons or dental students at Umeå University Hospital in Sweden. All cases were matched based on age, gender, and degree of difficulty of the surgery and then radiologically evaluated by the authors. Thereafter complications were recorded and divided into subgroups of intraoperative or postoperative complications. Results: The complication rate in total was 31% and there was no significant difference regarding complications between dental students and oral surgeons. Conclusion: As no higher degree of complication rate is present when students perform surgery, the authors of this study advocates continued operative extractions of mandibular wisdom teeth for dental students at the dentistry program at Umeå University