Immediate pain alleviation in oral mucositis and other oral ulcerative diseases through photobiomodulation therapy: the preemptive treatment concept.

Whereas most of the randomized controlled trials about photobiomodulation therapy for oral mucositis and other ulcerative oral diseases reported delayed pain relief, certain photobiomodulation therapy protocols reported immediate pain relief. The results of this review highlight the concept of preemptive photobiomodulation therapy, in which photobiomodulation therapy is delivered early in the development of oral mucositis throughout the oncotherapy and may achieve immediate pain relief consistently in most of the patients and close to a negligible pain level. Photobiomodulation therapy, as a powerful nonpharmacologic tool for immediate pain relief, has a great beneficial value in patients suffering from oral mucositis and other painful oral ulcerative diseases such as recurrent aphthous stomatitis and chronic graft-versus-host disease.