A RADIOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE ANTERIOR PALATE AS A DONOR SITE FOR BONE HARVESTING

Objectives: Objectives
To determine the volume of bone in the anterior palate of different age groups.
To determine the density of bone in the anterior palate
To determine whether there was any significant difference in the volume of bone in the anterior palate between males and females.
To determine whether there was any significant correlation between palatal bone density and gender.
To determine whether there was any significant correlation between palatal bone density and age.
Methods: One hundred previously acquired CBCT scans taken at the Diagnostic and Radiology Department of Tygerberg Oral Health Centre were analyzed for the required data. These were all acquired from a single CBCT machine (Newtom VGI^®, Verona, Italy). The study sample included 52 females and 48 males ranging from ages 20 years to 80 years. The CBCT scans were divided into 3 different age groups. The first age group was between the ages of 20 and 39 years, the second age group was from 40 to 59 years and the third age group was ≥ 60 years. The volume and density of the anterior palate of the different age groups were analyzed using specific criterion. CBCT specific software (Simplant Pro Crystal^®) Dentsply implants, Mannheim, Germany was used to standardize the data collection. All data was stored in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Corporation, Washington, USA).
Results: The mean volume of the anterior palate in this study was 2.11 ± 0.55 cm³, with a minimum volume of 1.04 cm³ and a maximum volume of 3.82 cm³. There was no significant difference in the volume and density of the anterior palate between different age groups and no significant difference in the volume between males and females (p value = 0.227).
Conclusions: The anterior palate affords a considerable amount of bone volume which is similar or even more than other intraoral donor sites. The anterior palate is a potential donor site for bone harvesting and CBCT may be regarded as an ideal tool to analyze the amount of bone available for harvesting.