Root coverage with an acellular dermal allograft: a three-month case report

Treatment of gingival recession has been a common practice in periodontics for years. As esthetic demands of periodontal patients increase, more root coverage procedures will be performed to satisfy esthetic demands. Often patients present with multiple areas requiring treatment. Palatal anatomy may limit the amount of autogenous tissue that can be harvested, limiting the number of procedures that can be performed. A patient may not desire to have additional tissue transplanted from the palate, due to increased pain and morbidity associated with multiple transplant procedures. The following is a case presentation of multiple adjacent recession defects. The patient presented with a shallow palate from which one side would not yield an adequate quantity of connective tissue. Furthermore, the patient declined to have both sides of his palate harvested simultaneously. As an alternative, an acellular dermal matrix allograft was utilized to correct these gingival defects negating the requirement for a second palatal surgical procedure.