Soft Tissue Around Implants to Maintain/Reestablish Peri-implant Tissue Health

Ensuring the long-term success of dental implants heavily relies on maintaining healthy peri-implant tissues. A recent meta-analysis reported significantly lower plaque scores, bleeding indices, mucosal recessions, and attachment loss for sites with wider keratinized tissue (KT). In recent years, emerging evidence supports the idea that peri-implant mucosal thickness represents an important factor in the maintenance of peri-implant health. Soft tissue grafting procedures have been proposed to modify the soft tissue phenotype, with the goal of increasing tissue thickness, the width of KT, and the height of supracrestal tissue. Soft tissue augmentation procedures are commonly recommended to increase peri-implant mucosal thickness for esthetic improvements and to address volume deficiencies as well as to facilitate tissue adaptation during implant placement. In conclusion, soft tissue augmentation procedures around dental implants contribute to improved peri-implant health by increasing the width of keratinized mucosa.