Efficacy of coronoidotomy as an adjunct to fibrotomy in advanced cases of oral submucous fibrosis: A prospective cross-sectional study

Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of Coronoidotomy as an adjunctive procedure to Fibrotomy in terms of improvement in intraoperative mouth opening during surgical management of Oral Submucous Fibrosis. Subjects and Method: 30 patients clinically diagnosed with OSMF (Grade IVa) underwent surgical intervention comprising of Bilateral Fibrotomy and Coronoidotomy. The inter-incisal distances were measured following Bilateral fibrotomy, Unilateral Coronoidotomy and Bilateral Coronoidotomy and compared. We evaluated the percent improvement in the inter-incisal distance after Unilateral and Bilateral Coronoidotomy compared to fibrotomy as well as the associated complications of coronoidotomy. Results: We found a striking improvement of 76.68% after performing Bilateral Coronoidotomy in comparison to fibrotomy. Furthermore, there was a mean increase of 34.56 ± 5.96 mm when compared to baseline pre-operative mean value (5.46 ± 4.04 mm). All the comparisons were statistically significant (P = 0.0001). Conclusion: Coronoidotomy is an effective adjunctive procedure to fibrotomy in terms of improvement in the intraoperative mouth opening in advanced cases of OSMF.