At present, dental specialties such as periodontics and oral surgery are responsible for the surgical treatment of defects in the gum and oral mucosa to correct and harmonize the mouth and smile of our patients aesthetically and functionally.
This article summarizes all surgical techniques and tools for the resolution of these mucogingival defects.
Periodontal tissue alterations (gingiva, alveolar bone and root cement), do not exclusively represent an aesthetic problem for the patient’s smile, but on different occasions they interpose and hinder other rehabilitation treatments of dentistry such as orthodontics or prostheses, also favoring the accumulation of plaque and, therefore, the inflammation of the gingival tissues.
Periodontal or mucogingival surgical therapy consists of surgical treatments aimed at the correction of morphological defects, position or number of soft tissues and alveolar bone underlying the teeth and osseointegrated implants.
These surgical procedures include a variety of treatments such as gingival augmentation, root plating, coronary lengthening, gingival preservation in ectopic eruptions, elimination of short lingual braces, elimination of high insertion labial braces, correction of mucosal defects adjacent to dental implants, prevention of alveolar collapse associated with tooth extraction, increase of tissue in an edentulous section, treatment of the gingival smile, exposure of an unerupted tooth, corrections in gingival coloration, reconstruction of the interdental papilla and superior lip repositioning.
