Biologically Guided Flap Stability: the Role of Periosteum Retention on the Performance of the Coronally Advanced Flap. A Double Blind Randomized Clinical Trial

Treatment of buccal gingival recession (GR) is the common clinical requirement from patients who are mainly concerned about aesthetics. Noteworthy are also requests linked to root sensitivity, difficulty in oral hygiene procedures, presence of root caries and non-carious cervical lesions. GR defects, when left untreated, do not improve spontaneously and may progress toward increased recession depth (RD) and clinical attachment loss which increase the patient's aesthetic concern and the clinical discomfort due to augmented dental hypersensitivity.

Complete root coverage (CRC) can be considered the primary clinical outcome and selecting the surgical technique depends mainly on the local anatomical characteristics and on the patient's demands.

In patients with a residual amount of keratinized tissue apical to the recession defect, the coronal advanced flap (CAF) may be recommended. This surgical technique results in optimal root coverage, good color blending of the treated area with respect to adjacent soft tissues and a complete recovery of the original (pre-surgical) soft tissue marginal morphology. Furthermore, post-operative morbidity is reduced to a single area of surgical intervention and the overall chair time is limited.

When utilizing CAF technique, critical factors in CRC have been described in the literature. Flap positioning coronal to the CEJ and a tension-free flap design are among the most important ones. Moreover, flap thickness has been shown to influence the clinical outcomes of CAF procedure .

Coronally advanced flap has been widely validated by the literature for the treatment of single recession defects and, currently, different flap designs and technical modifications are available to clinicians.