Biomaterials Exposed to Oral Environment: Which One is the Appropriate Option?

Surgical procedures and group division Following patient selection, minimal invasive extractions will be performed and standard alveolar preservation will be done using Bio-oss Collagen® - Geistlich for alveolar filling and (BioGide® or Mucograft® Seal - Geistlich, depending on the study group) for covering the gap-filling procedure showing one biomaterial side exposed to the oral cavity environment. The patients will be divided randomly into three experimental groups of 20 patients each, completing 60 patients. One group will receive alveolar preservation with Bio-oss Collagen® + BioGide® and the other group will receive alveolar preservation with Bio-oss Collagen® + Mucograft® Seal. A negative control group will be applied without any type of alveolar preservation, only minimally invasive extraction.

Evaluation time points will be named T0, T1, T2, T3 (T0 = immediate after surgery, T1 = 1 week, T2 = 3 weeks, T3 = 3 months).

After surgeries, patients will receive detailed verbal and written post-operative instructions, prescriptions for anti-inflammatory medication (ibuprofen 600 mg for 3 days, if needed), and antibiotic therapy (amoxicillin 500 mg every 8h for 7 days or, in case of penicillin allergy, clindamycin 300 mg every 6h for 7 days). Patients will be recalled at 1 (T1), 3 weeks (T2), and after three months (T3). Sutures were removed at 1 week. Patients will be advised to not use mouth rinses in order to not compromise the surgical procedure. Normal hygiene using toothbrushes and toothpastes will be indicated to the patients to maintain clean conditions.

Following surgical procedures, the surgical sites will be evaluated regarding biomaterial contamination, clinical tissue healing, and radiographic conditions.

Biomaterial surface contamination For biomaterial contamination, a sterilized swab for bacterial analysis will be used directly over the procedure (per patient/per time) for investigation of potential biomaterial surface contamination at T0, T1, and T2. Following this, the bacterial collection will be processed and evaluated at the Microbiological laboratory. The potential bacterial collection will be spread in agar plates and cultured in a stove under appropriate bacteria conditions for 24 hours. Bacteria colonies will be evaluated and counted comparing the proposed groups and time points in this study.

A control collection will be performed before the surgical procedure in the tooth extraction region using a sterilized swab to evaluate the previous microbiome and similarities to the post-surgery evaluations.