COMPARISON OF TWO SURGICAL TECHNIQUES FOR ROOT COVERAGE OF SINGLE GINGIVAL RECESSION
Gingival recession. Tooth root. Connective tissue. Surgical flaps. Clinical trial.
The increasing demands of patients for the treatment of gingival recessions bring up clinically significant therapeutic issues, requiring professionals to constantly improve in less invasive and more predictable surgical techniques. AIM: To compare two root coverage techniques to treat single, unilateral, type 1 gingival recessions. METHOD: This parallel, randomized, double-blind clinical trial evaluated individuals with single, unilateral, type 1 gingival recessions 1 (RT1), who underwent root coverage procedure with subepithelial connective tissue graft associated to a coronally advanced flap (control group) or a tunnel technique (test group). The main parameters evaluated were probing depth (PD), bleeding on probing (BoP), clinical attachment level (CAL), gingival recession (GR), height of keratinized tissue (KTH), gingival thickness (GT), percentage of root coverage (RC) and gingival phenotype (GP), in addition to patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), such as postoperative pain, cervical dentin hypersensitivity (CDH), esthetics, degree of satisfaction and quality of life, intra and intergroup, throughout 06 months follow-up. Data were statistically analyzed using paired Student t-test, t-test for independent samples, Chi-square, McNemar, Split-Plot Analysis of Variance with post hoc t-test (α = 5%). RESULTS: 46 subjects completed this study (control: 23; test: 23). Surgery time was longer for the test group (control: 40min ± 5.6; test: 51min ± 5.9; p = 0.041). Statistically significant reductions for GR and significant gain for CAL, KTH and GT were observed in the intragroup analysis, in both treatment groups, however, without differences between techniques. The CR increased significantly, but no intergroup differences were observed (control: 89.2%; test: 86.5%; p = 0.069). Intragroup analysis revealed a change in GP (control: 95.65%; test: 91.3%; p < 0.001). Both treatment protocols reduced postoperative pain and CDH and improved esthetics, satisfaction and quality of life (p < 0.001), with no differences between the techniques over time. CONCLUSION: Both treatments showed similar clinical efficacy in terms of root coverage and improvement in PROMs.