title: After dentoalveolar surgery, most patients are satisfied with telephone follow-up.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To estimate patient satisfaction with telephone follow-up and compare the frequencies of postoperative complications between patients undergoing telephone and those undergoing clinical follow-up after ambulatory office-based dentoalveolar procedures.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using a retrospective study design, the investigators enrolled a cohort of subjects who had had at least 1 tooth extracted during a 2-year period. The primary study variable was subject self-report of satisfaction with the telephone follow-up. For additional analyses, the predictor variable was follow-up type grouped as telephone versus clinical. The outcome variable was postoperative complications. To measure the relationships between the follow-up type and postoperative complications, bivariate and multiple logistic regression statistics were computed. P ≤ .05 was considered significant.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The sample was composed of 364 subjects, of whom 155 (42.6%) had received telephone follow-up. The sample's mean age was 28.6 ± 11.7 years, included 220 females (60.4%), and had had an average of 3.4 ± 2.1 teeth removed. The self-reported patient satisfaction rate with telephone follow-up was 95.9%. The subjects who experienced postoperative complications were 90% less likely to be satisfied relative to those without complications (P = .04). The overall complication frequency was 19.2%, with telephone follow-up subjects having a lower complication frequency (12.9%) than the clinical follow-up subjects (23.4%) (P < .01). After adjusting for differences between the 2 samples, no significant difference was found in the complication frequencies according to the method of follow-up (P = .7).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patient satisfaction with telephone follow-up was high. The subjects scheduled for telephone follow-up had a complication rate that was similar to that of the clinical follow-up subjects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. ssusarla1@partners.org
authors.forename: Srinivas M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Susarla
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Black
authors.forename: Thomas B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Dodson
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000359:Aftercare; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000556:Ambulatory Surgical Procedures; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003766:Dental Occlusion; D004368:Dry Socket / Q000209:etiology; D004435:Eating / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011183:Postoperative Complications; D016059:Range of Motion, Articular / Q000502:physiology; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D057566:Self Report; D012677:Sensation / Q000502:physiology; D013530:Surgical Wound Infection / Q000209:etiology; D013689:Telephone; D014081:Tooth Extraction; D055815:Young Adult