Dental Extractions in Patients Under Dual Antiplatelet Therapy: Comparison of Two Local Hemostatic Techniques

Postoperative hemostasis is a fundamental patient management issue in the oral and maxillofacial surgery setting. The risk of excessive bleeding prompts physicians to stop multiple antiplatelet agents before minor surgery, which puts coronary stenting patients at risk for adverse thrombotic events. Adequate hemostasis must be achieved in order to make oral surgeries possible for these patients without discontinuation of the antiplatelet regimen. The HemCon Dental Dressing (HemCon Medical Technologies, Inc, Beaverton, OR) is a novel chitosan-based hemostatic agent which may greatly improve upon the efficacy of wound healing and hemostasis both in extent and time for minor oral surgeries. Dental extractions will be performed in patients under dual antiplatelet therapy without altering their medication regimen. All patients will require to have two or more surgical sites so they will have internal surgical control sites. Cutaneous bleeding time and platelet aggregation tests will be obtained prior to extractions. The primary hemostasis will be evaluated by measuring the intraoral bleeding time after each extraction and further bleeding and healing outcomes will be ascertain by phone questionaires and clinical evaluations. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of HemCon Dental Dressing in controlling post extraction bleeding and to ascertain its role in healing of extraction wounds compared to a standard haemostasis method.