Table 2.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Pre-clinical Large-animal Defect Models for Oral Reconstruction

Defect Type	Animal Model	Advantages	Disadvantages
Furcation/Infrabony Periodontal Defect	Canine &Non-human Primate	Surgical Acute-Chronic • Short time period to develop defects; more cost-effective • Standardized morphological characteristics • Chronic disease model • Class II-III furcations can be created in a standardized fashion • Class III defects in Canine are of “critical size” • Bilateral symmetrical defects • Horizontal defect allows for reproducible landmarks • Well-studied model used for pre-clinical • investigation prior to human studies (canine) • Minimal palatal recession (non-human primate)	Surgical (Acute) • Do not reproduce inflammatory/infective conditions • Spontaneous partial repair (non-human primate) Surgical (Chronic) • Soft tissues compromised • Variable amount of connective tissue repair • More time-consuming than acute • Technically challenging
		Ligature-induced • Microbiological features similar to humans • Morphological features similar to humans • Minimal spontaneous repair • Reasonable consistency in defect severity	Ligature-induced • Disease development can be variable, depending on ligature placement and stability at the tooth sites • Non-standardized defect morphology (canine) • Require time to be created; expensive
Alveolar Socket	Canine & Non-human Primate	• Easy and fast to perform • Well reproduce the events occurring in bone healing	• Rapid bone repair compared with human (canine) • Kinetic (non-critical-size) defect
Infrabony Peri-implant Defect	Canine & Non-human Primate	Surgically Created • Short time needed to generate defect • Standard morphology-dimension • Ligature-induced • Morphological and microbiological similarities to humans	Surgically Created • Spontaneous repair • Ligature-induced • Spontaneous repair • Significant time required to generate defects
Supra-alveolar Peri-implant Defect	Canine	• Limited spontaneous regeneration • Reproducibly created	• Requires space-providing devices • Wound dehiscences