Preventive effects of an oral rinse Peppermint essence on chemotherapy-induced oral mucosistis

Abstract

Introduction: Oral mucositis (OM) is a significant and frequent complication of chemotherapy, whichresults in delayed or incomplete chemotherapeutic management. This study was conducted to determinethe effects of an oral rinse Peppermint essence (PE) in the prevention of chemotherapy- induced OMMaterials & Methods: In this double blind clinical trial, 40 patients with colon or rectum cancers, whoadmitted for chemotherapeutic management, randomly divided in two equal placebo and PE groups. PEand placebo groups were received 10 drops of oral rinse PE or placebo, three times a day, from the firstday of chemotherapy up to the fourteenth day, respectively. A bipartite questionnaire was used forobtaining demographic and clinical information. The evaluation of OM was measured using the WHOscale. Content and inter-rater methods were used for validity and reliability of tools, respectively (r =0.93).Results: The incidence of OM between the PE group (15%) and the placebo group (50%) wassignificantly different (p<0.05). The risk of OM in the placebo group was 3.3 higher than the PE group.Moreover, a significant difference between the grade and incidence time of OM was found between bothgroups (p<0.05).Conclusion: According to these results, it seems that oral rinse PE is an effective, safe and welltoleratedmethod for prophylactic treatment of chemotherapy- induced OM