Immediate Implant Placement with and without Soft Tissue Graft: A Scoping Review

Background: Over the past two decades immediate implant placement (IIP) has gained attention for reducing edentulism periods and treatment time. However, IIP cannot correct changes in soft and hard tissues changes after tooth extraction, and restorative esthetics can be compromised. Soft tissue grafts are often recommended to convert thin gingival biotypes to thick before or at the surgery of placing implants in deficient areas.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare direct implant placement with and without soft tissue grafting.

Materials and Methods: This paper was designed as a scoping review. The search strategy included online search of biomedical databases using MeSH terms and keywords until December 2023.

Results: Several studies and systematic reviews relevant to our topic were identified. But the results of these conflicted. More specifically, some report that there is no significant difference in the marginal change in bone level between the two treatment modalities, while others report that midfacial bone levels may be more stable after IIP and connective tissue graft (CTG), as CTG enhances soft tissue stability in the midfacial region after IIP.

Conclusions: Even though available data show that simultaneous soft tissue augmentation around delayed or immediately placed implants results in an enhancement of both the quality and quantity of the tissues surrounding an implant, the level of evidence is low, these data should be interpreted with caution and more, well-designed clinical studies should be carried out for robust data and conclusions to be derived from them.