Background: The aim of this review is to evaluate the levels of clinical evidence for bone replacement grafts available in the United States for periodontics and oral implantology purposes.
Methods: A search was performed using PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar for articles relating to the use of bone replacement grafts in implant and/or periodontics by two independent reviewers. Articles unrelated to the topic, not involving patients, not including abstracts, or in languages other than English were excluded. Selected articles were graded according to "levels of evidence" based on guidelines originally introduced by Wright et al. (2003).
Results: There was limited published peer-reviewed clinical literature available regarding US commercially available bone replacement grafts in periodontics and oral implantology. Of 144 bone replacement grafts available in the United States according to Avila-Ortiz et al. (2013), only 52 met the inclusion criteria. The majority of materials used were allografts (26 of 93 available in the United States), followed by alloplasts (15 of 30) and xenografts (11 of 21).
Conclusion: Dental providers should be aware of the limited evidence that qualified for a strong rating supporting the clinical efficacy of these materials for periodontics and oral implantology purposes using the inclusion criteria selected in this study.
Keywords: Bone substitutes; dental implants; evidence-based dentistry; regeneration.