Diode laser versus scalpel stripping in gingival melanin depigmentation.

Background: People with medium to deep skin tone commonly have pigmented gingiva as well. Some of these patients complain about this brownish color of gingiva so, many techniques were used to obtain the optimal pink gingival color.Objectives: Obtaining the best esthetics of gingival color by removal of excessive melanin pigmentation. Subjects and methods: The present study was conducted on twenty individuals complaining from increased gingival melanin pigmentation classified to two groups, group 1 in whichen individuals treated by scalpel and group 2: Ten individuals treated by diode laser. Degree of pigmentation and patient satisfaction score were documented at baseline and then one month and three months after treatment. Results: There was statistically significant decrease of pigmentation degree in both study groups after one month and after 3 months of treatment but there was no statistically significant difference between the study groups. There was no statistically difference between groups regarding patient satisfaction score. Conclusion: Diode laser depigmentation is a good alternative surgical depigmentation technique to the gold standard scalpel technique. KEYWORDS:Scalpel, Laser, depigmentation.