Treatment of localized gingival recessions. Part IV. Results after three years.

Twenty-six localized recessions treated with either a lateral sliding flap or a coronally repositioned flap procedure more than 3 years ago were reevaluated. Biometric measurements on the recipient and the donor of control teeth included: a) cementoenamel junction, gingival margin; b) sulcus depth; c) gingival margin, mucogingival line. These recordings were statistically compared to those taken 180 days after the surgical procedures were performed. Pairwise t tests were used to determine whether there were any changes between the 180 days and the 3 years postoperative control with either procedure. A two sample t test was run to see whether the changes obtained with the two procedures differed from each other. No significant changes were found. The values for gingival recession, sulcus depth and width of keratinized gingiva remained stable for both techniques throughout the observation period.