Efetividade do gel de Punica Granatum Linn. na prevenção da candidose oral em pacientes submetidos à radioterapia na região de cabeça e pescoço

Abstract

The radiotherapy and chemotherapy cancer treatments are associated with a variety of oral complications, among them, oral candidiasis. In allopathic medicine there is a lot of drugs developed for the treatment of this fungal infection, in contrast to phytotherapy has been a means promising pharmacological field.This research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the gel Punica granatum Linn. prevention of oral candidiasis in patients undergoing radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy, for treatment of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in the head and neck.Consisted in a clinical trial, longitudinal, prospective, blinded-simple, using the Miconazole as substance control. The sample consisted of 17 patients with malignancies in the head and neck treated in Hospitals Dr. Napoleão Laureano and Fundação Assistencial da Paraíba, in the period May 2012 to May 2013. The sample was divided into two groups, the experimental group I (n = 11) patients used the gel Punica granatum Linn., from the beginning of radiotherapy alone or associated with chemotherapy and completed one week after the end of the treatment regimen; the control group II (n = 6), patients used the gel Miconazole following the same guidelines as the previous group. The patients were instructed to use the gel four times a day after a good oral hygiene and evaluated weekly by physical examination intraoral. The data were tabulated in SPSS 20.0, analyzed using descriptive and inferential bivariate statistics where were applied the Chi-square test and calculate the correction continued Yates. It is noteworthy that for the interpretation of the information we adopted a confidence interval of 95%, and a significance level of 5% (p <0,05).The sample consisted mostly male (82.4%), with a mean age of 60.7 years, with a predominance of lesions on the tongue. In group 1, the oral candidiasis has not appeared in 41.2% of patients, as in group 2, no patient developed candidiasis. The results showed no statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups (p> 0.05), although the majority of patients who used the gel of Punica granatum Linn. not complained of adverse effects and showed no clinical signs of oral candidiasis, and when present, the clinical form was the most prevalent pseudomembranous.