Expression of Concern: A.H.Nejat, M.Eshghpour, N.Danaeifar, M.Abrishami, F.Vahdatinia, and R.Fekrazad, “Effect of Photobiomodulation on The Incidence Of Alveolar Osteitis And Postoperative Pain Following Mandibular Third Molar Surgery: A Double‐Blind Randomized Clinical Trial,” Photochemistry and Photobiology, 97 no. 5 (2021): 1129–1135. https://doi.org/10.1111/php.13457

This Expression of Concern has been issued for the above article, published online on 28 May 2021 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Alexander Greer; and Wiley Periodicals LLC. Concerns were raised by a third party regarding the study's ethical integrity. The article does not provide the ethics committee approval code or the clinical trial registration number, which is required for a prospective RCT conducted in Iran. Further concerns include the reporting of zero dropouts across the study's timeline and inadequate CONSORT reporting. The publisher contacted the authors in June 2025 for their response to these concerns and the authors responded noting that they were unable to access their records and databases because Iran was under active military strikes at the time. The publisher granted their request for an extension, but no further information was provided by the extension deadline. Upon informing the authors of the decision to publish this Expression of Concern, they explained that they were still unable to provide the requested information due to the state of national and international conflict affecting Iran. Because the publisher can neither verify the ethics approval, nor clarify the missing clinical trial registration, nor confirm the study's data integrity, we are publishing this expression of concern in order to inform and alert readers.