As per a recent systematic review and meta analysis results published in the Journal of Endodontics, the corticosteroids found effective than placebo in relieving postoperative endodontic pain following single-visit root canal treatment (RCT). Dental pain a common problem in the general population, and many individuals may feel anxiety while attending dental appointments due to fear of pain at the time of surgeries. Various approaches have been used to provide relief from pain following RCT and out of them is corticosteroids.

The study aimed to evaluate the corticosteroids effectiveness in reducing postoperative pain and related side effects after dental surgery as compared to placebo or other analgesics. Scopus, Cochrane, Medline and PubMed database was searched to find the related published articles. Clinicaltrials.gov site was also searched. Two independent reviewers estimated the quality, extracted data and eligibility for inclusion. The pooled effect size was used to perform the meta-analysis. 

A total of 37 citations via manual and 481 via database search was selected. Only 28 full-text articles were left after removing the duplicates. Out of 28, the inclusion criteria were completed by the five articles. One study has a low risk of bias, and four had the unclear risk of bias as per qualitative analysis — left articles presented with lesser sample size. The Prednisolone delivered before the treatment was capable of reducing postoperative pain at 6 h, 12 h and one day. No adverse effects were noticed during the analysis. These findings reflected a positive role of corticosteroids in postoperative dental pain management; however further research with large sample sizes is required to validate the outcomes.