Mucogingival surgery: where we stand today.

Mucogingival problems are developmental and acquired aberrations in the morphology, position, and/or the amount of gingiva surrounding teeth. According to an academic report by American Academy of Periodontology, mucogingival therapy should be advocated for gingival augmentation and to create adequate vestibular depth in areas with insufficient attached gingiva. This paper provides an overview on mucogingival surgical procedures from its inception to the current time.

Advances in mucogingival surgery.

The term Mucogingival Surgery was proposed by Friedman in 1957 to indicate any surgery "designed to preserve attached gingiva, to remove frena or muscle attachment, and to increase the depth of the vestibule". The aim of this type of surgery was to maintain an adequate amount of attached gingiva and to prevent continuous loss of attachment. This philosophy was supported by many horizontal observations in humans that confirmed the need for a certain band of attached gingiva to maintain periodontal tissue in a healthy state. Subsequently, clinical and experimental studies by Wennström and Lindhe (1983) demonstrated that as long as plaque buildup is kept under careful control there is no minimum width of keratinised gingiva necessary to prevent the development of periodontal disease. These observations reduce the importance of Mucogingival Surgery. Surgical techniques are used mostly to solve aesthetic problems, since the term "Periodontal Plastic Surgery" has been suggested to indicate surgical procedures performed to correct or eliminate anatomical, developmental or traumatic deformities of the gingiva or alveolar mucosa. More recently the Consensus Report of the American Academy of Periodontology (1996) defines Mucogingival Therapy as "non surgical and surgical correction of the defects in morphology, position and/or amount of soft tissue and underlying bone". This assigns importance to non-surgical therapy and to the bone condition because of its influence on the morphology of the defects. In this respect the Mucogingival Therapy includes: Root coverage procedures, Gingival augmentation, Augmentation of the edentulous ridge, Removing of the aberrant frenulum, Prevention of ridge collapse associated with tooth extraction, Crown lengthening, Teeth that are not likely to erupt, Loss of interdental papilla which presents an aesthetic and/or phonetic problem.