Several techniques have been proposed for bone regeneration in patients with atrophic ridges. Nowadays, GBR represents the gold standard, and it allows obtaining sufficient bone volumes for a correct implant-prosthetic rehabilitation. Our goal is to perform a systematic review of the literature on the use of titanium meshes in GBR in order to evaluate the reliability of the procedure, the regeneration obtained, and the failures. Furthermore, we will evaluate the success and survival rate of the inserted implants. The selected articles concern vertical and/or horizontal regeneration of the alveolar ridge using titanium grids, in association or not with biomaterials, before and simultaneously with implant placement. Six articles were selected for the present review, including a total of 139 patients, 156 sites, and 303 implants. Titanium grids in combination with autogenous bone were used in 2 cases, 5 in combination with a mixture of autogenous bone and bone substitutes. The overall survival and success rates of implants were 98.3% and 85.25%, respectively. In conclusion, our review shows how the use of titanium mesh represented a predictable method for the rehabilitation of complex atrophic sites.

The aim of the present systematic review was to screen the literature and to describe current applications of augmented reality. The protocol design was structured according to PRISMA-P guidelines and registered in PROSPERO. A review of the following databases was carried out: Medline, Ovid, Embase, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar and the Gray literature. Data was extracted, summarized and collected for qualitative analysis and evaluated for individual risk of bias (R.O.B.) assessment, by two independent examiners. Collected data included: year of publishing, journal with reviewing system and impact factor, study design, sample size, target of the study, hardware(s) and software(s) used or custom developed, primary outcomes, field of interest and quantification of the displacement error and timing measurements, when available. Qualitative evidence synthesis refers to SPIDER. From a primary research of 17,652 articles, 33 were considered in the review for qualitative synthesis. 16 among selected articles were eligible for quantitative synthesis of heterogenous data, 12 out of 13 judged the precision at least as acceptable, while 3 out of 6 described an increase in operation timing of about 1 h. 60% (n = 20) of selected studies refers to a camera-display augmented reality system while 21% (n = 7) refers to a head-mounted system. The software proposed in the articles were self-developed by 7 authors while the majority proposed commercially available ones. The applications proposed for augmented reality are: Oral and maxillo-facial surgery (OMS) in 21 studies, restorative dentistry in 5 studies, educational purposes in 4 studies and orthodontics in 1 study. The majority of the studies were carried on phantoms (51%) and those on patients were 11 (33%). On the base of literature the current development is still insufficient for full validation process, however independent sources of customized software for augmented reality seems promising to help routinely procedures, complicate or specific interventions, education and learning. Oral and maxillofacial area is predominant, the results in precision are promising, while timing is still very controversial since some authors describe longer preparation time when using augmented reality up to 60 min while others describe a reduced operating time of 50/100%. The following systematic review was registered in PROSPERO with RN: CRD42019120058.

Human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been widely investigated both for regenerative medicine and their antinflammatory/immunomodulatory capacity. However, their ability to home pathological tissues suggested the development of strategies for using MSCs as carrier to deliver drug into tumor microenvironment. MSCs obtained from different tissues can be loaded in vitro with anti-cancer drugs by a simple procedures. In this report, we studied MSCs isolated and expanded from gingival papilla (GinPa-MSCs), by testing their ability to uptake and release three important anti-neoplastic drugs: Paclitaxel (PTX), Doxorubicin (DXR) and Gemcitabine (GCB). The efficacy of drugs releasing GinPa-MSCs was studied on a pancreatic cancer cell line and confirmed in vitro against a line of tongue squamous cell carcinoma (SCC154). Our results demonstrated that GinPa-MSCs efficiently incorporate the drugs and then released them in active form and in sufficient amount to produce a dramatic inhibition of squamous cell carcinoma growth in vitro. If compared with other MSCs sources, the collection of GinPa-MSCs is poorly invasive and cells can be easily expanded and efficiently loaded with anti cancer drugs. In particular, gemcitabine loaded GinPa-MSCs provide a good “cell-mediated drug delivery system” for a future potential application in the context of the oral oncology.

In this study we aimed at quantifying the possible errors which may occur when assessing specific reference planes and linear derivants on cephalometric radiographs traced manually and digitally. Furthermore, we have compared the precision of the tracings according to both the two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D respectively) techniques and between clinicians. We have obtained via cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) archive of the orthodontics department of the University of Milan 20 cone beam CT radiographs from which we have obtained 20 latero-lateral radiographs. Five independent clinicians referred to as A, B, C, D, E have been randomly selected to trace both radiographs maintaining the same working and lighting conditions to minimize the possibility of operator- and environment-dependent errors from occurring. The results have been statistically assessed by Student’s t test. The comparison of the data gathered from the tracings in 2D and 3D shows that certain measurements have statistically significant differences. Particularly, the difference in the measurements of the sagittal dimension of the mandible and the anterior and posterior nasal spines has resulted to be statistically significant. The results of the intra-operator comparison proved that the 3D technique is extremely precise. Our study determines that the 3D technique allows to obtain more precise results and with several advantages when compared to the conventional technique such as a true representation of the anatomical structures, less risk of errors occurring due to clinician skills and absence of overlapping anatomical structures.