A review of biomaterials used to treat peri-dental and peri-implant lesions

Introduction: Periodontics is, to a great extent, associated with debridement of periodontal pockets; however, regeneration of periodontal tissues and application of biomaterials have attracted a lot of attention during the recent decades and considerable progress has been achieved in this field. The materials used include bone grafts, membranes and growth factors. The aim of this article was to review biomaterials currently used to treat peri-dental and peri-implant lesions and assess the future needs in this field. Search strategy: All the relevant articles indexed in Pubmed from 1976 to 2013 were searched, using the following key words: guided tissue regeneration, Guided bone regeneration, bone graft, membrane and tissue engineering. Of all the 105 abstracts retrieved, papers were selected that had evaluated the clinical aspects of the use of biomaterials used to treat peri-dental and peri-implant lesions. Conclusion: The use of growth factors, genes and stem cells has been promising and these agents will lay the future foundations of biomaterials. It appears trial-and-error processes determine the best biomaterials for use in periodontal treatment.  Key words: Guided tissue regeneration, Guided bone regeneration, Bone graft, Membrane, Tissue engineering.