Dental Implant Treatment Using Graft, Graftless and Graft Less Approaches

Bone augmentation is often required to place an adequate number of dental implants in ideal positions for prosthetic support.  In addition to improving biomechanics, bone enhancement can improve esthetic outcomes.  The use of autogenous bone is still a mainstay in our surgical techniques, but growth factors can be used as an alternative.

Inherent disadvantages of bone grafting techniques include increased morbidity, surgical time, costs and treatment length.  As such a trend has developed towards alternative augmentation procedures with less morbidity and more minimally invasive approaches that avoid the need bone grafting including shorter and narrower implants, angled implants and/or fewer implants for prosthetic support.  Rather than surgically reconstructing esthetic zone defects many clinicians opt to replace the missing hard and soft tissue with the prostheses.  This presentation will guide clinicians on implant rehabilitation with grafting and non-grafting approaches.

Objectives:

• Discuss alternative methods to manage sites with reduced bone volume.

• Review methods that may reduce morbidity for bone augmentation.

• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of grafting and non-grafting solutions.