Hard and soft tissue healing around teeth prepared with the biologically oriented preparation technique & restored with provisional crowns: an in vivo experimental investigation

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the hard and soft tissues healing around teeth prepared with the Biological-ly Oriented Preparation technique (BOPT) vs. the Chamfer technique vs. non-prepared teeth. Material and methods: Thirty-two teeth in eight beagle dogs were randomly prepared with the BOPT (test=16) or Chamfer (control=16) techniques and covered with PMMA crowns as provisional restorations. Sixteen negative controls (non-prepared teeth) were also used for comparison. Histo-logical description and histomorphometrical measurements of the periodontal tissues were collected at 4 and 12 weeks in 7 out of 8 dogs, including the soft tissue height and thickness, and the horizon-tal and vertical bone dimensions. Results: When compared with negative controls, test and control preparation techniques exhibited a more apical location of the free gingival margin with respect to the CEJ (∆ = 1.1mm for both groups at 4 weeks (p<0.05), 0.99mm for the test group (p 0.043) and 0,20mm for control group (p 1.000) at 12 weeks) . There were no significant differences between test and control groups with respect to vertical and horizontal histometric measurements. Conclusions: The BOPT and Chamfer tooth preparation protocols induced similar qualitative and quantitative changes in the healing of the supra-crestal soft tissue complex, when compared to non-prepared teeth. Despite the limited amount of power, it appeared that differences between the tested preparation techniques were not statistically significant.