Minimally Invasive Surgery Combined with Regenerative Biomaterials in Treating Intra-Bony Defects: A Meta-Analysis

With the popularity of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) in periodontics, numerous publications have evaluated the benefits of MIS with or without various regenerative biomaterials in the treatment of periodontal intra-bony defects. However, it is unclear if it is necessary to use biomaterials in MIS. Thus, we conducted a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials in patients with intra-bony defects to compare the clinical outcomes of MIS with regenerative biomaterials for MIS alone.

The authors retrieved English publications on relevant studies from Cochrane CENTRAL, PubMed, Medline, Embase, Clinical Evidence, and ClinicalTrials.gov (up to June 30, 2015). The main clinical outcomes were the reduction of probing pocket depths (PPDs), gain of clinical attachment level (CAL), recession of gingival margin (REC) and radiographic bone fill. Review Manager 5.2 (Cochrane Collaboration, Oxford, England) was used to calculate the heterogeneity and mean differences of the main clinical outcomes.

In total, 464 studies in the literature were identified but only four were ultimately feasible. The results showed no significant difference regarding CAL gain (P = 0.32) and PPD reduction (P = 0.40) as well as REC increase (P = 0.81) and radiographic bone fill (P = 0.64) between the MIS plus biomaterials group and the MIS alone group.

The meta-analysis suggested no significant difference in treatment of intra-bony defects between the MIS plus biomaterials group and the MIS alone group, indicating that it is important to take costs and benefits into consideration when a decision is made about a therapeutic approach. There needs to be an in-depth exploration of the induction of intrinsic tissue healing of MIS without biomaterials to achieve optimal outcomes.