Clinical significance of biologic width

Abstract

Strictly, “Biologic Width” is defined as added value of vertical distances of junctional epithelium and supra-crestal attached tissues. It can be assumed that junctional epithelium which is a significant area with protectively physiological barrier would be named as “Biologic Width” because healthy periodontal tissues are affected by destruction of the epithelial areas. In this review paper, the author describes the following issues closely related to biologic width, including historic background, usefulness of fixed value, prosthesis margin, newly established aesthetic dentistry invading biologic width such as BTA (Biologic Tissue Adaptation) and BOPT (Biologic Oriented Preparation Technique), orthodontic intrusion movement, significance of Caffesseʼs experiment, opinions of World Workshop 2017 on the prosthesis margin, and conclusion and clinical validity proposed by the Workshop that the term of biologic width should be changed to supra-crestal attached tissues.