Periodontal Status and Dental Implant Failure in Long-Term Follow-Up

Objectives: To evaluate the correlation between periodontal status and other explanatory variables as well as to estimate implant failure rates according to periodontal status and type of failure (surgical vs. prosthetic) Methods: This was a prospective cohort study from all consecutive patients operated from 1996 through 2008 by a single surgeon (RA) The cohort consists 736 patients with a total of 2336 dental implants. Aggressive periodontitis patients were excluded. Results: Among the participants, 39.5% were diagnosed as healthy periodontal patients, 20.8% were diagnosed as moderate chronic periodontitis patients and 39.7% were classified into the severe chronic periodontitis group. Higher proportion of diabetic patients (16.5%) was observed among the severe chronic compared to moderate chronic (11.4%) and healthy periodontal (6.0%). Significantly higher proportion of smokers was observed among the severe chronic (19.3%) compared to other groups. Healthy periodontal patients tend to be younger (mean=46.05) compared to moderate chronic (mean=53.77) and severe chronic periodontitis patients (mean=54.93). During the follow up period a total of 43 (1.9%) implants failed at surgical phase and 50 (2.2%) failed at prosthetic phase. Group comparison revealed 5.2% failures among the severe chronic periodontal patients, compared to only 3.3% and 3.0% among moderate chronic periodontal patients and healthy groups, respectively. During the prosthetic phase 3.2%, 2.1% and 0.9% failure rates were observed within the severe, moderate and healthy groups. Conclusion: Patients with history of treated severe chronic periodontal disease tend to present higher rates of dental implants failures. Differences between periodontal groups in failure rates are more prominent at prosthetic phase.