Response to comments on IJOMS publication

We thank the author very much for their constructive comments to our published paper, titled “Risk factors of neurosensory deficits in lower third molar surgery: a literature review of prospective studies”. We are especially grateful that they have pointed out reference 120, which reported on lingual nerve (LN) was excluded, whilst the same study reporting on inferior dental nerve (IDN) on reference 121 was included. We are sorry that we have overlooked that there are actually two different papers from the same study. We would like to take this opportunity to make an adjustment to include reference 120, which reported on the technique of third molar surgery and the risk of LN. The re-calculated percentage of LN by buccal approach as the technique of lower wisdom tooth surgery is 2.3% (355/15672).

This figure is the same as shown in Table 3 of our paper and has not changed the overall result and conclusion of the study.

The study has included prospective studies on neurosensory deficit after lower wisdom tooth surgery. We have considered various methods for statistical analysis of the data during the study design planning stage and finally chose the current method. A larger sample size of a study will be reflected with a more significant effect of the final result on each category of risk factors. Amongst the included studies only seven are randomized controlled trials.

Regression or as suggested “weighing them using the inverse of the variance” would not be feasible nor appropriate as they should only be used when the data were more homogenous or the studies were all randomized trials.

Funding

None.

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Feb 5, 2018 | Posted by in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery | Comments Off on Response to comments on IJOMS publication

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