Aim: Evaluating effectiveness of a medicinal plant extract (MPE) in achieving haemostasis and early wound healing at free gingival graft (FGG) donor site in a randomized controlled fashion.
Methods: Forty patients requiring FGG at lower anterior area were randomly assigned into two groups. FGG was performed to all patients and following graft procurement; wet gauze (WG) was applied alone (control: WG group) or with MPE (test: MPE + WG group) for haemostasis. Donor site working time, bleeding (BLE), colour match (CM), pain, epithelization (EP) and sensation loss (SL) were evaluated.
Results: Thirty-three participants completed a 6-month period study. In the test group, primary BLE was shorter (p < 0.001) and fewer individuals showed secondary BLE during 3 days (p < 0.001). During the 6 days, pain scores were higher in WG patients (p < 0.05). Later on, no inter-group difference was observed. EP was relatively faster (p < 0.001) and CM was slightly better (p < 0.05) in MPE + WG group.
Conclusion: MPE provided faster and continuous haemostasis that made a positive contribution to the early soft tissue healing to some extent but due to limitations; further trials are needed to demonstrate the efficiency of this material.
Keywords: donor site; free gingival graft; haemostasis; palatal healing; wound healing.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.