Pain After Diode Laser Frenectomy in Children

This prospective single-group clinical study aims to evaluate postoperative pain following diode laser-assisted frenectomy in pediatric patients and to assess the agreement between different pediatric pain assessment scales. Children aged 8 to 14 years who require diode laser-assisted frenectomy will be treated according to the standard clinical protocol at the Pediatric Dentistry Clinic of Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University. Postoperative pain will be evaluated once daily for seven consecutive days using the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale, the Modified Emoji Pain Scale (MEPS), and gender-specific pain assessment scales. The primary objective is to characterize the time course of postoperative pain during the first postoperative week. Secondary objectives include evaluating the agreement and correlation between the different pain assessment instruments used in pediatric patients. The findings are expected to contribute to the identification of reliable pain assessment methods and to improve postoperative pain evaluation following diode laser-assisted frenectomy in children.