Aesthetic outcomes of non-functional immediately restored single post-extraction implants with and without connective tissue graft: A multicentre randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the 1-year aesthetic results of flapless single implants, placed in fresh extraction sockets with bone replacement and immediate provisional restoration with or without a connective tissue graft (CTG). MATERIAL AND METHODS: The present study proposes a partially blinded multicentre parallel randomized controlled trial, where computer-generated tables were used for central randomization to allocate treatments. A total of 59 of the 60 patients screened by eight private practices in Northern Italy fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Immediate implants were placed in a fresh extraction socket with a non-functional immediate provisional restoration with (Test group) or without (Control group) a CTG. The primary outcome variable was the implant Crown Aesthetic Index (ICAI) at the 1-year follow-up. RESULTS: ICAI for the 59 randomized patients (Test group = 31, Control group = 28) at the 1-year follow-up was 4.69 (95% CI = 3.16-6.22) for the Test group and 3.45 (95% CI = 1.83-5.08) for the Control group, without statistically significant difference between the two groups (p = .086). One implant failure was recorded in each group, resulting in an implant survival rate of 96.8% [95% CI = 83.3-99.9] for the Test group and 96.4% [95% CI = 81.7-99.9] for the Control group. Other secondary outcome variables and complication rates were comparable across the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Within the limitations of the present clinical trial, the results suggested that the adjunct use of CTG is not mandatory to achieve successful aesthetic outcomes for a well-planned immediate implant placement with immediate non-functional provisional restoration in a fresh extraction socket.

Inclusive Semileptonic Decays from Lattice QCD.

We develop a method to compute the inclusive semileptonic decay rate of hadrons fully nonperturbatively using lattice QCD simulations. The sum over all possible final states is achieved by a calculation of the forward-scattering matrix elements on the lattice, and the phase-space integral is evaluated using their dependence on the time separation between two inserted currents. We perform a pilot lattice computation for the B[over ¯]_{s}→X_{c}ℓν[over ¯] decay with an unphysical bottom quark mass and compare the results with the corresponding OPE calculation. The method to treat the inclusive processes on the lattice can be applied to other processes, such as the lepton-nucleon inelastic scattering.

Precision determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa element V(cb).

We extract the magnitude of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element V(c)} and the most relevant parameters of the heavy quark expansion from data of inclusive semileptonic B decays. Our calculation includes the recently computed O(α(s)Λ(QCD)(2)/m(b)(2)) corrections and a careful estimate of the residual theoretical uncertainty. Using a recent determination of the charm quark mass, we obtain |V(cb)|=(42.21±0.78)×10(-3) and m(b)(kin)(1 GeV)=(4.553±0.020) GeV.

Guided bone regeneration with and without a bone substitute at single post-extractive implants: 1-year post-loading results from a pragmatic multicentre randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether the adjunctive use of a bone substitute at immediate single implants placed in fresh extraction sockets with a residual buccal bone-to-implant gap of at least 1 mm could improve the aesthetic outcome of guided bone regeneration (GBR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eighty patients requiring bone augmentation at a single immediate postextractive implant to improve the aesthetic outcome were randomly allocated to an augmentation procedure using a resorbable barrier alone (GBR group; 40 patients) or a bone substitute plus a resorbable barrier (GBR + BS group; 40 patients) according to a parallel group design at four different centres. Three to 4 months after implant placement/augmentation, implants were loaded with provisional or definitive single crowns. Outcome measures were implant failures, complications, aesthetics assessed using the pink esthetic score (PES), patient satisfaction and peri-implant marginal bone levels, recorded by blinded assessors. All patients were followed up to 1 year after loading. RESULTS: One patient dropped out from the GBR group. Seven (9%) implants failed: 2 (5%) in the GBR + BS group and 5 (12.5%) in the GBR group. Six minor complications occurred in the GBR + BS group versus 2 in the GBR group. These differences were not statistically significant. Just after implant placement/augmentation, mean bone levels were -0.21 mm at GBR + BS implants and -1.92 mm at GBR implants whereas at 1 year after loading they were -1.04 and -1.76, respectively. When comparing the two groups, GBR + BS implants had 0.70 mm more peri-implant marginal bone than GBR implants. Aesthetics was scored by a blinded assessor as statistically significantly better for the GBR + BS group. Patients were equally satisfied. There were no differences between centres regarding the clinical outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: The use of additional an organic bovine bone substitute (Endobon) with resorbable collagen barriers (OsseoGuard) in defects around post-extractive implant improves the aesthetic outcome, though single post-extractive implants might be at a higher risk for implant failures.

Determining the sign of the b-->sgamma amplitude.

The latest Belle and BABAR measurements of the inclusive B -->Xsl+l- branching ratio have smaller errors and lower central values than the previous ones. We point out that these results indicate that the sign of the b-->sgamma amplitude is the same as in the standard model. This underscores the importance of B -->Xsl+l- in searches for new physics, and may be relevant for neutralino-dark matter analyses within the minimal supersymmetric standard model.