A Comparative Study of AI-Powered/Computer-Guided Versus Conventional Linear Micro-Perforation Split Approach for Treatment of Horizontal Mandibular Ridge Atrophy (A Randomized Clinical Trial)

In contemporary dentistry, the aim is to replace missing teeth with prosthetics or to remove diseased teeth from the patient and return them to normal in terms of shape, function, comfort, appearance, speech, and health. Why implant dentistry is different is the capacity to fulfill this objective despite atrophy, illness, or harm to the stomatognathic apparatus.

Implant-based dental rehabilitation of partly or completely edentulous areas has become a frequent procedure with consistent long-term outcomes in recent decades. Nevertheless, alveolar ridges are frequently impaired with horizontal inadequacy as a result of bone resorption, which has an impact on implant application.

The resorption of alveolar bone is a common sequelae of tooth loss and presents a clinical problem for implant placement. Implants must be placed with at least 1 mm of bone on the buccal and lingual aspects to maintain crestal bone levels.

Narrow edentulous ridges less than 5 mm wide present a challenge to the clinician for implant placement. Hence, lateral bone augmentation procedures are necessary to overcome maxillary and mandibular bone deficiencies. These procedures involve the use of bone augmentation, such as guided bone regeneration (GBR), bone block (autogenous or non-autogenous), and conventional onlay/inlay graft. Those procedures have many drawbacks such as longer healing time (6-9 months) for adequate bone regeneration before implant placement, the possibility of membrane exposure, an increased risk of infection, high cost, and rapid graft resorption; thus leading to inadequate bone regeneration or loss of the newly formed bone.

Based on previous knowledge, ridge split/expansion was introduced as an alternative to treat the width insufficiency of alveolar ridges with specific indications. The basic procedure includes a sagittal osteotomy in the center of the edentulous ridge, where the two cortical plates are expanded to increase the width and thereby simultaneous implant insertion with an appropriate diameter could be achieved.