Journal of Dental Medicine

Background and Aim: The usage of free gingival grafts for vestibuloplasty is a routine procedure. The free gingival procedure requires harvesting the graft from a donor site which increases morbidity and the risk of surgical complications. In addition, adequate amount of donor tissue may not be available. Acceptable results of Alloderm application as a substitute for autogenous soft tissue grafts are: Not exposing the patient to an additional surgery, no donor site morbidity, unlimited availability, decreasing the bleeding during the surgery, decreasing the surgical complications, and better color match. The aim of this study was to evaluate the maintenance of the vestibular depth in vestibuloplasty with mucosal graft and Alloderm.
Materials and Methods: Both methods of anterior mandibular vestibuloplasty by Clark, utilizing Alloderm and mucosal grafts, were employed in ten clinical cases. During the surgeries, half the prepared recipient sites received Alloderm, while the remaining half received autografts in a randomized fashion. Immediately, 1, 3, and 6 months postoperatively, the variables of graft rejection, depth of vestibule and the degree of relapse were evaluated. SPSS software was used for analysis of the data and the methods used for "statistical tests" were as follows: Friedman Method, Paired sample t-test, Smirnov-kolmogrove Method. (The statistical significance level was established at P-value<0.05.
Results: The mean difference of the relapse measurements in both methods throughout the survey did not have significant predictive value (P>0.05). Similar results were achieved for the mean difference of depth of the vestibule.
Conclusion: In patients undergoing Vestibuloplasty, Alloderm could be material of choice to be utilized as autogenic soft tissue grafts in pre-prosthesis procedures.

Background and Aims: The present study was designed for evaluation of bovine demineralized bone matrix (DBM) in healing process of bone defects and comparison of bovine DBM (xenograft) and human DBM (allograft) which is used clinically.

Materials and Methods: Seven male white New Zealand rabbits were used in this study. The incision was made directly over the midsagital suture of the parietal bone. Then 3 bicortical defects were created with trephine bur No.8 (8mm diameter). The defects were randomly filled with graft materials. One of the defects was left without any graft in all samples (as a control defect). The amount of bone formation was evaluated 3 months after surgery histopathologically. The data were analyzed using Friedman test, and when P-value was less than 0.05, the pair wise group comparison were performed by Wilcoxon (Boneferroni adjusted) test.

Results: Statistical analysis showed that there was a significant difference between bovine DBM group with control group (P=0.03). Furthermore, human DBM group was significantly different from control group (P=0.02). However, the difference between bovine DBM group and human DBM group was not statistically significant (P=0.87).

Conclusion: The results of this study showed the satisfactory bone healing in rabbit parietal bone defects filled with bovine DBM. The amount of healing in these defects was similar to bone defects which were filled with human DBM that is used clinically.