Management of Alveolar Osteitis in Dental Practice: A Literature Review

Background: Dry socket is one of the most common post-extraction complications with its incidence reaching up to 30% after impacted third molar extractions. In spite of its high incidence, there is no established treatment for the condition. Objectives: To investigate how efficient different management methods of Alveolar osteitis are, in regards to pain relief, healing process and reduction of the incidence. Materials and Methods: A literature search of “PubMed-MEDLINE” database was conducted using the keywords “dry socket management”, “alveolar osteitis”, “fibrinolytic alveolitis”, “post-extraction complications”. The inclusion criteria were clinical studies, case reports, reviews and human studies, related to alveolar osteitis published from 2011-2016, written in English language. The exclusion criteria were animal studies, studies that discussed other post-extraction complications, and in any other languages than English. Results: 63 articles were found and only 31 were reviewed. 18 out of 31 articles were included in the results, after reading the full text, due to lack of significant results in the rest of the articles. Out of these there were 12 clinical studies, 3 systematic reviews and 1 retrospective study. Conclusion: It was concluded that there is no specific management that could be rated as the best to treat dry socket, due to the lack of evidence to support the use of one management over the other, although there are many options that can help manage it and have proved to be highly effective recently and until today.