Issue microcirculation around extended implant-supported prostheses with few abutment sites in patients with terminal mandibular dentition

Abstract

Relevance. The success of implant-supported prostheses depends on the quality of the jawbone. Traditionally, it is assessed radiographically, but this method is not only invasive but also unreliable and inaccurate for predicting the outcome of treatment.Material and methods. The study included 80 patients (49 women and 31 men) with a mean age of 71 ± 7 years, which formed four groups. Group A (control group, n = 20) consisted of patients with healthy periodontium; comparison group B, n = 20, comprised patients with terminal dentition; the main group C (n = 20) included patients with extended rehabilitation, fixed 7-10 days before; group G (n = 20) was composed of patients with “Trefoil” implant-supported prostheses, fixed three years earlier. The blood flow of peri-implant tissues was assessed using ultrasound Doppler flowmetry (UDF). All patients (n = 20) underwent dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) before the prosthetic treatment.Results. The analysis of pre-prosthetic-treatment ultrasound Doppler flowmetry results showed low values of microcirculation in the alveolar ridge mucous membrane in patients with terminal dentition compared with the control group. On the 7th day after implant-supported prosthetic treatment, group C demonstrated an increase in microcirculation by 11.42% compared to the control group and by 147.36% compared to group B. Three years after implant-supported prosthetic treatment, the ultrasound data revealed a statistically significant increase in blood flow velocity 0.342 ± 0.04 (cm/s) (p < 0.01). The Pearson coefficient determined a high correlation between T-scores of DXA and ultrasound Doppler flowmetry data (r = 0.829, p = 0.0001).Conclusion. Ultrasound Doppler flowmetry (UDF) can be the main method for studying the peri-implant tissue condition at various stages of implant-supported prosthetic treatment.