The Clinical Effect of Simultaneous Grafting With Implant Placement Comparing Soft Tissue Grafting Alone to Combined Hard and Soft Tissue Grafting

Thirty sequentially entered patients will have a dental implant placed in maxillary sites from 4 to 13. Any implant system is acceptable since the objective of the study is to evaluate soft tissue contour due to graft placement, not to evaluate the implant. Once selected for participation immediately prior to treatment, they are randomized for a treatment group by a coin toss. Fifteen patients will receive Alloderm alone (Positive Control Group) while another fifteen will receive Alloderm plus Bovine derived Xenograft (Test Group). The graft will be placed simultaneously with the dental implant. A blinded examiner Dr.Jodie Lusby will be used. Should the examiner become unblinded the subject will be excluded from the study. Means and standard deviations will be calculated for all parameters. A paired test will be used to evaluate the statistical significance of the differences between initial and final data. An unpaired t-test will be used to evaluate statistical differences between the test and control groups. A sample size of 12 will afford ≥ 80% statistical power to detect a difference of 0.4 mm soft tissue thickness between groups. P value will be set at p≤0.05.