Guided tissue regeneration

Guided bone regeneration or GBR, and guided tissue regeneration or GTR are dental surgical procedures that utilize barrier membranes to direct the growth of new bone and gingival tissue at sites having insufficient volumes or dimensions of bone or gingiva for proper function, esthetics or prosthetic restoration.

GBR is similar to guided tissue regeneration (GTR) but is focused on development of hard tissues in addition to the soft tissues of the periodontal attachment. At present, guided bone regeneration is predominantly applied in the oral cavity to support new hard tissue growth on an alveolar ridge to allow stable placement of dental implants. Bone grafting used in conjunction with sound surgical technique, GBR is a reliable and validated procedure.

There are several uses of bone regeneration:

• Building up bone around implants placed in tooth sockets after tooth extraction
• Socket preservation for future implantation of false teeth or prosthetics
• Filling of bone defects after removing the root of a tooth, removal of impacted teeth
• Repairing bone defects after the reopening of a wound