Spiral family implants inserted in postextraction bone sites.

PURPOSE

In the last 2 decades, several investigators have reported immediate placement of dental implants into extraction sockets achieving excellent results with a 2-stage surgical procedure. Recently, immediate loading has become an emerging technique as it has been documented to be a successful and a time saving procedure. As regard, few reports are available for the possibility of immediate/early loading of implants placed in fresh extraction sockets. In addition, they are based on limited series with short follow-up. Thus, we decided to perform a retrospective study on a series of postextractive spiral family implants (SFIs).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In the period May 2004 to November 2007, 133 SFIs were inserted in fresh extraction sockets. The mean follow-up was 12 months. Several host-, surgery-, and implant-related factors were investigated and Kaplan-Meier algorithm and Cox regression were used to detect those variables associated with the clinical outcome.

RESULTS

Because only 7 of 133 implants were lost (i.e., survival rate, 94.7%) and no statistical differences were detected among the studied variables, no, or reduced, marginal bone loss was considered as an indicator of success rate to evaluate the effect of several host-, surgery-, and implants-related factors. Also, in this case no variable has impact on clinical outcome.

CONCLUSION

It was demonstrated that postextractive SFIs have a high survival and success rate that are similar to those reported in previous studies of 2-stage procedures or in immediate loading implants inserted in healed bone.