Placement of autogeneic bone chips or bovine bone mineral in guided bone augmentation: a rabbit skull study.

PURPOSE Our primary aim was to use a rabbit guided bone augmentation model to evaluate whether use of autogeneic bone grafts or bovine bone mineral (BBM) combined with a space-making barrier enhances bone augmentation compared with a barrier alone. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sixteen rabbits were studied. In each rabbit, 2 titanium cylinders, each with 1 titanium lid, were placed subcutaneously in perforated slits made in the cortical bones, with their open ends facing the parietal bones. One cylinder was left empty and the other was filled with either autogeneic skull bone chips or BBM. Bone labels were injected after 4 and 11 weeks. After 12 weeks, the animals were sacrificed to obtain ground sections for histology and histomorphometry. RESULTS Significantly more tissue was augmented in the 2 test groups than in the control group. Most of the autografts were resorbed, leaving only minute amounts in the upper third of the cylinders. Slender new bone trabeculae were distributed mainly from the contiguous bone plate that had no contact with the remaining graft material. In the BBM group, most of the BBM remained evenly distributed in the cylinder. In the upper third of the cylinder, the BBM was surrounded by soft connective tissue, while in the lower two thirds, mainly mineralized bone enclosed the BBM. Equal amounts of mineralized bone were found in both test groups. Comparisons of contact between bone and BBM on one hand and bone and bone cylinder wall on the other revealed that the greatest bone contact was with the BBM in the lower third of the cylinder. In the middle and upper third of the cylinder, bone-BBM contact and bone-cylinder wall contact were similar. Fluorescent label intensity was higher in the autograft group than in the BBM group. In all 3 groups the intensity of the early label was similar to that of the late label, indicating that the graft materials do not seem to retard mineralization. DISCUSSION BBM was found to promote as much new bone as did autogeneic bone. In addition, BBM appears to have at least the same osteoconductive properties as titanium, provided BBM is contained in a stable environment. CONCLUSIONS Placement of autogeneic bone or BBM in conjunction with a stiff space-making barrier generated more tissue than a barrier only. In this model, autogeneic bone chips and BBM augmented similar amounts of new mineralized bone.