Purpose: The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative immunohistochemical evaluation of microvessel density (MVD) in alveolar sites augmented with autologous bone or Bio-Oss.
Materials and methods: Eighteen patients participated in this study. All patients presented maxillary ridge defects. These defects were filled in a random fashion with autologous bone or Bio-Oss. Endosseous implants were inserted after a mean of 3 months in the sites augmented with autologous bone and after a mean of 6 months in the sites augmented with Bio-Oss. As part of the implant site preparation, a trephine was used to harvest bone cores. As control, bone cores retrieved in nonaugmented sites were used. The mean value of MVD in control bone was 25.6 +/- 3.425. In the sites augmented with autologous bone, the MVD was 29.8 +/- 4.4, while in the sites regenerated with Bio-Oss, the MVD was 29.7 +/- 2.4. The statistical analysis showed that the difference in MVD between control bone and autologous bone (P = 0.057) and between control bone and Bio-Oss (P = 0.023) was statistically significant. The difference between the sites regenerated with autologous bone and those regenerated with Bio-Oss was not significant (P = 0.6889).
Conclusions: Our results show that both sites augmented with autologous bone and Bio-Oss presented a higher and statistically significant quantity of microvessels compared with control specimens. No significant differences were found when comparing the MVD of the sites regenerated with autologous bone and those regenerated with Bio-Oss. The retrieval time was, however, a mean of 3 months for the autologous bone sites and a mean of 6 months for the Bio-Oss sites. These data could support the hypothesis of faster healing for the sites augmented with autologous bone.