Abstract
Piezoelectric surgical instruments with various mini-sized tips and cutting technology offer a precise and thin cutting line that could allow the wider use of periodontal osseous wall swaging. This randomized controlled trial was designed to investigate the use of a minimally invasive piezo knife to harvest vascularized interseptal bone pedicles in treating intra-bony defects. Sixteen non-smoking patients (mean age 39.6 ± 3.9) with severe chronic periodontitis were randomly assigned into one of two groups (N = 8). The Group 1 (control) patients were treated by bone substitute grafting of the intra-bony defect, whereas the Group 2 patients were treated by intra-bony defect osseous wall swaging (OWS) combined with xenograft filling of the space created by bone tilting. In both groups, the root surfaces were treated with a neutral 24% EDTA gel followed by saline irrigation. Clinical and radiographic measurements were obtained at baseline and 6 months after surgery. The sites treated with osseous wall swaging showed a statistically significant probing-depth reduction and increase in clinical attachment compared with those of the Group 1 patients. The defect base level was significantly reduced for the OWS group compared to that of the Group 1 control. By contrast, the crestal bone level was significantly higher in the OWS group compared to Group 1. The crestal interseptal bone width was significantly higher in Group 2 at 6 months compared to the baseline value and to that of Group 1 (<0.001). The osseous wall swaging effectively improved the clinical hard- and soft-tissue parameters. The use of mini inserts piezo-cutting, sequential bone expanders for osseous wall redirection, and root surface EDTA etching appears to be a reliable approach that could allow the use of OWS at any interproximal dimension.