The Clinical Comparison of Free Gingival Graft Harvested from Palate versus Attached gingiva

Despite doubts about the necessity of the presence of keratinized gingival tissue around teeth, increasing its width is still of special importance in particular situations. Among currently used procedures, free gingival autograft is more common. The aim of this study was to clinically compare the free gingival graft taken from palate(FGGP) versus free gingival graft taken from attached gingiva(FGGA) following a healing period of one, two and three month that will determine and introduce the superior procedure to be used in practice. The present study was a controlled, split mouth clinical trial which 10 pairs of lower anterior and premolar teeth requiring gingival augmentation were exposed to surgery using (FGGP) and (FGGA). Statistical data analysis was done using SPSS software. Chi- square (χ2) test was used for comparison of color matching between two groups. Nonparametric Mann- Whitney test was used for comparison of mean keratinized gingival width and dimensional changes of graft between two groups. This study demonstrated that the increased amount of keratinized gingival width three months following the surgery, was significant for both groups but there were no statistically significant differences between two groups. (P>0/05). With regard to the color matching with adjacent tissue, the results of (FGGA) was superior to (FGGP) (P<0.05). The amount of dimensional changes in the (FGGP) was more than (FGGA)(P<0.05). Both procedures had the ability to increase the keratinized gingival width, however (FGGA)had lower dimensional changes.In addition, (FGGA) had better color matching and esthetic.