Peri-implantitis – Surgical treatment with or without adjunctive graft material

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This review of the surgical treatment of peri-implantitis alone or in combination with adjunctive graft material included 5 small RCTs. The findings suggest improvements in marginal bone level (MBL) with graft material but the findings should be interpreted very cautiously because of the limited amount and quality of the evidence.

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Maxillary sinus augmentation – relative performance of available biomaterials and the challenge of small studies

Sinus Lift

Mark Steven Howe takes a detailed look at this Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) assessing the relative performance of diffferent biomaterials used for maxillary sinus augmentation. 34 RCTs with 28 different treatment options providing a large number of potential pairwise comparisons although only a small number used direct data. The findings suggest little difference beween the various biomaterials but the available studies are small with only 5 being at low risk of bias.

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Alveolar ridge preservation techniques

tooth Socket_preservation_complete

16 RCTs were included in this Cochrane review update of the effectiveness of techniques for alveolar ridge preservation (ARP) following dental extractions prior to implant placement. The findings suggest that ARP techniques may minimise the overall changes in residual ridge height and width six months after extraction, but the evidence is very uncertain

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Short dental implants for the atrophic posterior mandible?

iStock_000014314701XSmall dental implant

The main aim of this systematic review is to look at implant based restorative options for restoring the atrophic posterior mandible using osseointegrated dental implants. The atrophic posterior mandible is defined here as having a residual ridge height of 8mm from the inferior dental nerve to the crest of the ridge. The two options considered [read the full story…]

Third molar removal: effect on periodontal health of second mandibular molars

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Mark-Steven Howe looks in detail at a recent network meta-analysis (NMA) of periodontal outcomes following third molar surgery. However the limited number of studies available for the NMA mean the reviews findings need to be interpreted with caution.

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Alveolar ridge augmentation effective suggests review

Stac Pollaidh Sep05

This review of alveolar ridge augmentation procedures included 40 studies only 17 of which were RCTs . While a statistically significant improvement was seen, there was a very high degree of heterogeneity because of the wide range of clinical procedures, measurement approaches and healing times in the included studies.

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Alveolar ridge preservation: limited evidence for current techniques

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This Cochrane review identified 8 RCTs of alveolar ridge preservation (ARP) techniques. They provide limited evidence that ARP minimises overall changes in residual ridge height and width six months after extraction.

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Review suggests that via socket filling with a bone graft can help preserve alveolar ridge

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Vertical and horizontal alveolar bone loss follows tooth removal. Maintaining good alveolar ridges has an impact on future treatment options. As a consequence a range of approaches have been investigated with a view to ridge preservation. The aim of this review was to determine the effect of socket grafting to prevent post-extraction ridge volume loss [read the full story…]