The reconstruction of alveolar process in cleft lip palate patients is mandatory to enable the eruption and movement of permanent teeth through the clefted area by orthodontic procedure, beside the establisment of aesthetics with prostetic procedure by osteointegrated implants. Considering that autogenous bone grafts provide a high reabsortion level determining a reduction of orthodontic movement or making impossible to place implants, to minimize this problem, we developed a protocol by which the bone (anterior iliac crest) is mixed with alloplastic material (hydroxyapatite) to keep the bone matrix framework, reducing the absotion degree at the clefted area. We selected 30 patients at the Centro de Atendimento Integral ao Fissurado Lábio-Palatino (Center of Integral Care of Cleft Lip and Palate Patients), in Curitiba, Paraná (from 1997 to 1999). The patients were divided in two groups: at the first one, we utilized grated autogenous iliac crest and in the last one, the same bone combined with bio-reabsorbable hydroxyapatite. After 6 months, we compared for both procedures, the results through digital periapical X ray, concerning the height of the alveolar bone of the adjacent teeth, and 4 limiting lines for bone reconstruction as follow: line 1 was drawn at the cervical region of the adjacent tooth to the less distorted cleft and lines 2,3 and 4, parallel to line 1, being 3mm apart from each other. It was successfull considered the grafts whose greatest concavity was between lines 1 and 2 (space A) and for grafts between lines 2 and 3 (space B) or 3 and 4 (space C), surgical failure. The control group (grated bone) had 46,7% of the patients in space A while the study group (bone plus alloplastic material) 80% of patients in this space, being the determining factor of sucess the patient age.
Bone; Graft; Autogenous