Piezolelectric surgery in dentistry: a review

In the last ten years was observed a significant increase of publications about piezoelectric bone surgery. The purpose of this review was to define the state of art and to realize a comparison between piezoelectric devices and manual or rotating traditional techniques, analyzing advantages and disadvantages from a clinical and histological point of view for various dental procedures. The literature review has been carried out using medical databases on line: MEDLINE and COCHRANE LIBRARY. The authors selected 37 publications about dental field and consistent with inclusion criteria established. From the clinical point of view, the analysis of selected publications concerning procedures such as maxillary sinus lift, alveolar ridge expansion, samples of autologous bone, etc, showed surgical trauma reduction, especially towards to soft and nervous tissues, surgical mini-invasiveness, cut precision and selectivity and speed of learning guaranteed by piezoelectric devices compared to traditional ones. Histologically, however, the study of biology and postintervention bone tissue healing showed a lower loss of bone with piezoelectric instruments than with conventional devices, as well as a better healing quality by reducing patient's postsurgery morbidity. The use of piezoelectric devices seems thus to simplify different sinus lift surgical procedures and to allow greater predictability, although some studies reveal that there are not substantial differences in comparison of long-term results between conventional and piezoelectric instruments and also criticize their increase in operation time.