Efficacy of lateral bone augmentation prior to implant placement: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Initially smaller bone dimensions are associated with favours larger bone width gain, which indicates that a severe lateral bone deficiency can be effectively augmented applying primary lateral bone augmentation. Both Patients' age and recipient site (maxilla or mandible) seem to influence graft resorption. The addition of a xenograft can be helpful in reducing graft resorption. Existing evidence from randomized and prospective non-randomized trials on humans indicates that lateral bone augmentation prior to implant placement can successfully increase bone width. There are some indications that patient-related, site-related, and technique-related characteristics might influence the amount of gained bone width, but the quality of evidence is for the most part hampered by the small number of existing studies and methodological limitations that might lead to bias.