Investigation of Morphological Changes of the Soft Tissue in the Aesthetic Zone: A 3D Virtual Analysis after Conventional Tooth Extraction and Benex® Extraction.

Background: Postoperative resorption of hard and soft tissues occurs as a consequence of tooth extraction. The Benex^®-Control extractor allows minimally invasive extraction of the tooth without causing pronounced iatrogenic trauma. The aim of this study was to verify whether the resorption of the tissues after extraction can be reduced by using the Benex^® system compared to the conventional extraction method.

Methods: Postoperative intraoral scans were superimposed after surgery (t0), after 7 days (t1), after 14 days (t2), after 30 days (t3), after 60 days (t4), and after 90 days (t5) within the two groups (study n = 14, control n = 16), and defined regions of interest (ROIs) (1-8) and volume changes were analyzed. In addition, the influence of gingival thickness and the thickness of the labial cortical plate was investigated.

Results: The greatest decrease in volume was observed in both groups in ROI3, although there was no significant difference observed between the groups. In the presence of an adjacent tooth, there was less volume loss in the affected ROIs (1, 2 and 7, 8). The thickness of the gingiva and the bony lamella did not significantly influence the change in volume.

Conclusions: Due to the small cohort, the results are limited, and the hypothesis is rejected.