The Influence of Palatal Harvesting Technique on The Donor Site Vascular Injury:A Split-Mouth Comparative Cadaver Study.

Aim The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of two harvesting approaches on the donor site vascular injury. Methods A split-mouth cadaver study was designed on 21 fresh donor heads. Every hemi-palate was assigned to receive the trap-door harvesting technique (TDT) or the epithelialized free gingival graft harvesting technique (FGGT). A soft tissue graft was harvested from each side for histology analyses. Betadine solution was used to inject the external carotid artery and a collagen sponge was positioned over the harvested area to compare the amount of "leakage." Results The mean leakage observed was 16.56 +/- 3.01 mu L in the FGGT-harvested sites, and 69.21 +/- 7.08 mu L for the TDT group, a ratio of 4.18 (P < 0.01). Regression analyses demonstrated a trend for more leakage at thinner palatal sites for the FGGT group (P = 0.09), and a statistically significant correlation for the TDT-harvest sites (P = 0.02). Additionally, a shallow palatal vault height (PVH) was associated with a higher leakage in both harvesting groups (P = 0.02). The histomorphometric analyses revealed that grafts harvested with TDT exhibited a significantly higher mean number of medium (o = 0.1 to 0.5 mm, P = 0.03), and large vessels (o >= 0.5 mm, P = 0.02). Conclusions Within the limitations of the present research, the TDT resulted in a significantly higher leakage than the FGGT, which was also correlated with the histology analyses where a greater number of medium and large vessels were observed in the harvested grafts.