Short Versus Regular-Length Implants to Rehabilitate Partially Edentulous Mandible: A 2-Year Prospective Split-Mouth Clinical Study

Abstract

Many studies have evaluated short implants (SIs); however, it is still unclear whether SIs are reliable and can be used to simplify surgical and prosthetic protocols with successful clinical outcomes. The aim of this non-random, conveniently sampled, prospective, split-mouth study was to compare the clinical outcomes when short (SI) (≤8 mm) or regular-length implants (RIs) (>10 mm) were used in the posterior mandible two years after the delivery of splinted reconstructions. Each participant (N=10) received four implants in the posterior mandible; two SIs were placed on one side, and two RIs were placed contra-laterally. Implants were restored with splinted, screw-retained, porcelain-fused-to-metal reconstructions. Survival and success rates, peri-implant marginal bone level (MBL), and soft tissue parameters were evaluated. No participant drop-outs were recorded. Both types of implants showed 100% success and survival rates. From prosthetic delivery to 24 months post-loading, bone remineralization of +0.40 mm for the SIs and +0.36 mm for the RIs was observed without statistically significant differences in MBL between the implant types (p=0.993). SIs showed significantly higher (p=0.001) clinical attachment level (CAL) and probing depth (PD) values. Chipping occurred in one situation in the RI group resulting in a 97.5% prosthetic success rate, which was 100% for the SIs. After 2 years, SIs with splinted reconstructions showed comparable clinical outcomes to those of RIs. Further long-term controlled clinical studies with balanced experimental designs evaluating random and larger populations are required to corroborate these findings.

Patient‐reported outcome measures focusing on the esthetics of implant‐compared to tooth‐supported single crowns—A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Apart from the studies included in this systematic review, similar results have been previously reported in other studies describing esthetic outcomes of tissue level implants. 12,78,73 Even though no significant effect of provisional phase presence with implant-supported crowns was found in the present study, the CIs were much tighter (89.9-92.6) when a provisional crown was delivered, compared with when provisional crown was used (70.6-100). This outcome may be an indicator of a tendency to a more positive patient perception when a provisional crown is delivered.…”

“…In the present systematic review, the satisfaction of patients was higher with tissue level implants albeit, not statistically significant ( p = 0.128) (Table 12). Apart from the studies included in this systematic review, similar results have been previously reported in other studies describing esthetic outcomes of tissue level implants 12,78,73 …”

“…Based on the electronic search, 356 articles were selected, and 4 additional articles were included after a hand search based on their titles resulting in 360 abstracts (Figure 1). Sixty‐nine full‐text papers were reviewed based the inclusion and exclusion criteria, of which 57 19–75 were eligible for inclusion, and finally, 22 studies with 29 study cohorts deemed eligible for inclusion (Figure 1, Table 2).…”

Systematic review evaluating the influence of the prosthetic material and prosthetic design on the clinical outcomes of implant‐supported multi‐unit fixed dental prosthesis in the posterior area

“…The remaining eight RCTs' research questions were not directly comparable to the focused question of the present systematic review, such as comparing different Zr systems (Larsson & Vult von Steyern, 2016) different implant lengths (Fonseca et al, 2022;Guljé et al, 2019;Romeo et al, 2014), digital vs. conventional impression techniques (Derksen et al, 2021), splinted vs. non-splinted crowns (Al-Sawaf et al, 2020;Clelland et al, 2016) and the time point of implant loading (Cesaretti et al, 2016). As none of the included RCTs exactly addressed the focused question of the present systematic review, they were addressed as prospective studies and analyzed as such.…”

Peri-implantitis: effects of periodontitis and its risk factors—a narrative review

“…Patients with a history of periodontitis have an implant failure by an odds ratio of 3.02 compared to periodontally healthy patients (73). There are suggestions in the earlier literature stating that shorter dental implants (<7 mm) may have an increased failure rate (72), however, there are much more overwhelming data suggests that shorter implants have the same success rate as standard length implants (74)(75)(76).…”