Guided Bone Regeneration for the Reconstruction of Alveolar Bone Defects

Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is the most common technique for localized bone augmentation.

The purpose of this review was to categorize and assess various GBR approaches for the reconstruction of human alveolar bone defects.

Electronic search of four databases including PubMed/Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane and hand searching were performed to identify human trials attempting GBR for the reconstruction of alveolar bony defects for at least 10 patients from January 2000 to August 2015. To meet the inclusion criteria, studies had to report preoperative defect dimensions in addition to outcomes of bone formation and/or resorption.

Twenty-five human clinical trials were included of which 17 used conventional technique that is the use of space maintaining membrane with bone grafting particles (GBR I). Application of block bone graft with overlying membrane and particulate fillers was reported in seven studies (GBR II), and utilizing cortical bone block tented over a defect preserving particulate fillers was reported by one study (GBR III). A wide range of initial defects' sizes and treatment results were reported.

This review introduces a therapeutically oriented classification system of GBR for treating alveolar bone defects. High heterogeneity among studies hindered drawing definite conclusions in regard to superiority of one to the other GBR technique.