Surgical versus examination gloves in exodontia: A randomized, double-blind, controlled trial

Context: In developing countries like India, where money set aside for public health, is Aims: This study aims to conduct a study to ascertain whether it is necessary to use surgical gloves in routine dental extractions. Materials and Methods: A comparative, prospective, randomized, double-blind study was carried out in one hundred patients for nonsurgical extractions of multiple teeth, performed aseptically. Microbiology specimens were taken from the glove's surfaces according to a standard protocol. An independent assessor, who was blinded for the procedure, examined the patients on the 7 th postoperative day. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel sheet and subjected to Statistical analysis using SPSS Version 20. Statistical Analysis: Paired “ t ”-test, unpaired “ t ”-test and Karl Pearson's Coefficient test were used to calculate the scientific data and association between variables. A P = 0.05 or less was considered statistically significant while 0.001 or less, as statistically, highly significant. Results: A total of 100 patients who had 356 extractions were obtained at the end of the study. Paired “ t ”-test showed the highly significant difference from pre- to post-operative colony forming units at 1% level of significance ( P Conclusions: The present study concluded that the use of surgical gloves does not offer a definite advantage over examination gloves in minimizing the rate of infections following extraction of teeth.