This randomized two parallel arms controlled clinical trial aims to establish the early microvascular healing, clinical healing, and patients related outcomes, which follow the harvest of a free gingival graft, where hemostasis has been achieved with either compressive sutures and homeostatic sponges (control) or with a simplified suture-less approach (test). The primary outcome is the microvascular healing of the palate14 days after surgery, assessed by measuring the palatal blood flow with a Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSI), expressed in Laser Speckle Perfusion Units (LSPU). Secondary outcomes include the palatal blood flow at 3, 7 and 30 days after surgery, the clinical healing of the palate, the occurrence of postoperative bleeding and patients related outcome measures assessed 14 postoperative days. A figure of 15 subjects per group was obtained based on an expected difference of 7 LSPU, considering a SD of 6.3 SLPU, 80% power, alpha 0.05, and assuming a foreseen drop-out rate of 10%. Patients will be randomly allocated to two groups: test (simplified suture-less approach) and control (compressive sutures and homeostatic sponges). Patients will be the unit of analysis and T-student (normal distribution) or U Mann Whitney (non normal distribution or non parametric variables) will be performed setting the significance level at p < 0.05.
Randomized, single-center trial with 2 parallel arms and a 1:1 allocation ratio, with the aim of comparing clinical and microvascular healing and patients related outcomes, which follow the harvest of a free gingival graft, where hemostasis has been achieved with either compressive sutures and homeostatic sponges (control) or with a simplified suture-less approach (test).