Guided Bone Regeneration: An Introduction to Guided Bone Regeneration and Why We Are Doing This

Audience and educational scope

This ebook is intended for licensed dental clinicians who already understand implant diagnosis, restorative planning, surgical anatomy, asepsis, and management of routine postoperative complications.

It is an educational resource, not patient-specific advice, a surgical credential, or a substitute for diagnosis and treatment planning. It does not replace formal training, supervised clinical experience, informed consent, or compliance with local regulations and validated product instructions.

Guided bone regeneration decisions should integrate the current evidence with the patient's medical and dental findings, preferences, defect anatomy, soft-tissue conditions, restorative goals, treatment alternatives, and the clinician's competence. When a procedure or complication exceeds that competence or the resources available, the appropriate course is referral to an appropriately trained clinician.

Current consensus frameworks emphasize patient- and site-specific selection rather than a single protocol (Tonetti et al. 2019, PMID 31215112, DOI 10.1111/jcpe.13131; Jepsen et al. 2019, PMID 31038223, DOI 10.1111/jcpe.13121). These reports guide assessment but do not authorize a clinician to perform an advanced procedure.

I wrote this ebook after seeing how knowledge about guided bone regeneration is dispersed across scientific articles, courses, conferences, and clinical experience. Its purpose is to organize that material into a practical framework while making the limits and uncertainties visible.

This book shares the contributors' documented approaches and the principles that inform their decisions. Case examples illustrate particular patients and should not be interpreted as guarantees or universal instructions.

Many collaborators made this possible and I am truly thankful to all of them. This is the work of many years, summarized in a few pages, now also available as an online interactive eBook.

Continue to Chapter 2: Bone Biology