The effect of placing a bone replacement graft in the gap at immediately placed implants: a randomized clinical trial

To assess the added value of using a bone replacement graft in combination with immediate implants in reducing the bone dimensional changes occurring in the residual ridge.

Randomized parallel controlled clinical trial to study the efficacy of grafting with demineralized bovine bone mineral with 10% collagen (DBBM-C) in the gap between the implant surface and the inner bone walls when the implants were immediately placed in the anterior maxilla. The changes between implant placement and 16 weeks later in the horizontal and vertical crestal bone changes in relation to the implant were evaluated through direct bone measurements using a periodontal probe. Mean changes were compared between the experimental and control sites using parametric statistics.

A total of 86 implant sites in 86 subjects were included in the analysis (43 in the test group and 43 in the control group). The horizontal crest dimension underwent marked changes during healing mainly at the buccal aspect of the alveolar crest where this reduction amounted to 1.1 (29%) in the test group and 1.6 mm (38%) in the control group, being these statistically significant (P = 0.02). This outcome was even more pronounced at sites in the anterior maxilla and with thinner buccal bone plates.

In conclusion, the results from this clinical trial demonstrated that placing a DBBM-C bone replacement graft significantly reduced the horizontal bone resorptive changes occurring in the buccal bone after the immediate implantation in fresh extraction sockets.