Aim: In daily practice of dental implants, it becomes an inevitable challenge to place the implants in the severe cases such as the narrow or shallow alveolar ridge. It has been known that the sprit crest technique and the socket lift procedure played an important role in those difficult cases. We have employed them more than 10 years ago and the preferable results are obtained in our department. The purpose of this paper is to make clear the clinical notes and the efficacy of split crest and socket lift procedure for the difficult cases of implant placement such as a thin alveolar ridge.

Materials and methods: From July1999 to December 2010, 46 patients (26 male, 20 female) with a median age of 53.3 year-old were treated and 82 AQB implants (Advance Co LTD., Tokyo) were placed with split crest or socket lift procedure (63 implants for split crest technique, 19 implants for socket lift procedure).

Results: Seven implants were lost in the split crest cases (success rate 88.9%), and only one implant was failed in the socket lift cases (success rate 94.7%).

Conclusion: The most important point is thought to be the appropriate choice of clinical cases in terms of both cosmetic and functional viewpoints, and one of the significant clinical findings for split crest cases is that the height of the alveolar ridges should be sufficient, even though those widths are narrow. The wrong choice of clinical cases might lead to the failure of implant placement.

Conflict of interest: None declared.