Methods: The study consisted of 226 patients; 113 consecutive patients with immediately provisionalized dental implants (cases) and 113 with conventional-late implant loading (controls). Patients ranged in age from 18 to 81 years (average 51.27 ± 15.18 years). All dental implants were placed between the years 2000 and 2006. Data were recorded regarding the survival rate of these implants and incidence of complications.
Results: Follow-up ranged from 6 to 91 months (mean 37.12 ± 23.13; 29.80 ± 18.06 months for the test group and 44.45 ± 25.31 for the controls). Smoking was reported by 20.8% of patients. The present study failed to reveal a relation between implant survival rate and smoking, implant dimensions and area of implantation.
Six implants failed in the test group (5.3%) and 2 in the control group (1.8%). This difference, however, was not statistically significant. All failures except for one in the test group were immediate implantations.
Conclusion: Immediately provisionalized dental implants can serve as a predictable procedure with good survival rates over time. Our results indicated a trend toward higher failure rates of immediate provisionalization with no statistically significant difference.