A computed tomographic evaluation of change in bone volume after secondary bone grafting over the first postoperative year

The result of secondary alveolar bone grafting has been evaluated in many ways. 1–3 When there is only the need to see a bony bridging of the cleft several months after operation the evaluation method can be simple. 1 In these cases, conventional dental radiography will be sufficient to visualize the cleft area. Bergland et al. 2 and Enemark et al. 3 used conventional dental radiographs to make a quantitative analysis of the remaining bone graft in the cleft to measure the rate of success which was determined by the coverage of the root of both teeth adjacent to the cleft.

The use of computed tomographic scans increased the amount of information about the cleft area and so became more widely used for this purpose. 4–8 Several methods of quantitative measurement have been described. Besides the evaluation of the transplanted bone, computed tomographic scans can be used for imaging the position of the cuspid, the position of other teeth in the cleft area, to visualize asymmetries of the face resulting from clefts, and for planning implants if necessary.

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether there was resorption of the bone graft and to determine what would happen to the bone volume of the cleft area after the secondary bone grafting.