Rehabilitation of edentulous posterior atrophic mandible: inferior alveolar nerve lateralization by piezotome and immediate implant placement

The height and consistency of the bone tissue located above the inferior alveolar nerve (IAN) represents an important challenge when a patient's atrophied posterior mandible is rehabilitated with an osseointegrated implant. Usually, the surgical reconstruction of atrophic ridges is performed using several different techniques. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of the inferior alveolar nerve lateralization (IANL) technique performed with ultrasonic cutting technology (piezotome). To demonstrate this, 38 osseointegrated implants (11–15 mm in length) were performed during 19 procedures on 15 different patients. After 8 weeks, 14 of those 15 patients (18 of 19 sites: 94.73%) showed normal IAN function. The implant success rate was 97.36%.