Fotobiomodulação no tratamento do líquen-plano oral: análise do custo-efetividade

Abstract

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is an inflammatory mucocutaneous disease with differ- ent clinical presentations and painful symptoms. Conventional treatment is the use of topical or systemic corticosteroids. However, this therapy is associated with adverse effects and recurrence. As a therapeutic alternative, photobiomod- ulation (FBM) has been indicated to decrease painful symptoms and improve the clinical aspect of lesions. The literature is controversial in relation to the effective- ness of FBM in the treatment of OLP, nor is it known about the cost-effectiveness of the treatments recommended for OLP. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate two clinical protocols for the treatment of OLP and to verify which of the protocols is most cost-effective. The methodological procedures were carried out in two stages. The first stage consisted of the clinical study of two treatment protocols: corti-coide (control group) and FBM (experimental group), in which the variables pain, quality of life and recurrence at the end of treatment and after 30 days of treatment were evaluated. end of treatment. In the second stage, the costs of each treatment were raised, and the cost-effectiveness analysis was carried out taking into account the variables described above. It was observed that both FBM and corticosteroids were effective in reducing the pain of patients with OLP at the end of treatment and after 30 days of follow-up. There was no statistically signif- icant difference in relation to the impact of oral health on quality of life in both groups, although improvement was observed both after FBM and corticosteroids. In order to enable the comparability of the costs of treating the OLP of this eco- nomic study, the US dollar was used as a reference. Corticosteroid treatment is more cost-effective than FBM as it requires less expense to improve the patient's pain. However, FBM had a greater number of patients with clinical success com- pared to the Control group, with a cost-incremental difference between the two treatments being $ 30.06. In addition, considering quality of life as an outcome, treatment with corticosteroids was more cost-effective than FBM. Thus, both treatments are effective in reducing the pain of patients with OLP, with cortico- steroid treatment being more cost-effective.