Soft Tissue Expansion: Principles and Inferred Intraoral Hydrogel Tissue Expanders

Background: Tension-free closure of the intraoral site is a prerequisite at bone augmentation procedures.Dental surgeons mainly use a technique called soft tissue mobilisation.The soft tissue expander has not yet been used in the daily practice.However, in plastic surgery, soft tissue expansion is often used to create a surplus of soft tissue.The experience gathered in plastic surgery can be extrapolated into intraoral surgery.Especially the new small-sized hydrogel soft tissue expanders can be used intraorally in implant dentistry.Purpose: This paper presents systematically the principles of soft tissue augmentation.Its purpose is to summarize the general knowledge about soft tissue expanding and the characteristics of tissue expanders.Experience gathered in plastic surgery is transformed to intraoral use.It outlines the advances of tissue expansion and its possible role using hydrogel soft tissue expanders in dental implant therapy. Materials and methods:The electronic data bases Science Direct, PubMed, High Wire and Google Scholar were searched for articles published until March 2015.The related terms were used.Result and discussion: Intraoral tissue expansion seems useful and practicable, although complication rates are still high, which could be caused by poor clinical experience.A decision tool is given to decide whether intraoral soft tissue expansion is a treatment option.Although the studies for intraoral use are minimal, the technique is absolutely valid.