That’s why we’re excited to see a new study looking at the survival rates for dental implants placed with or without bone augmentation over a 20-year period. It shows that, overall, bone augmentation leads to a higher success rate.
Three Practices, 20 Years, 10,000 Implants
When it comes to dental implant longevity, it’s hard to collect data from long enough periods to calculate long-term implant survival. With this study, researchers from three different dental practices looked at every single implant they had placed over the past 20 years.
The doctors placed 10,165 implants during this period, but had to exclude seven because their date of placement wasn’t recorded. That left 10,158 implants for inclusion in the study. The implants were placed in 3095 patients (1693 women) with an average age of 52.4 at the time of implantation. Women on average received 3.32 implants each, while men received an average of 3.24 implants each. All patients received a standardized follow-up care. This care included a checkup at three months after surgery, and yearly evaluations by their dentist.
Many different bone graft materials were used, including the patient’s own bone as well as 13 different commercial bone graft materials.
Because the practice of implant placement has increased significantly in recent years, most of the implants were placed more recently than the full follow-up period. Only 14.1 % had a follow-up of 10 years or more and 2.7 % had a follow-up 15 years or greater.
Survival Rates for Dental Implants
The overall survival rate was 95.47%. The survival rate for dental implants without augmentation (41.7% of the total) was 94.27%, while those with augmentation had a survival rate of 96.3%.
Survival rates were were even higher when considering just single-crown dental implants. The survival rate for these implants was 98.1% (98.8% with augmentation, 97.1% without).
This might sway us to choose bone augmentation in marginal cases to make sure we’re providing enough stability.
Of course, bone augmentation procedures come with additional cost, and, often, increase time for the implant surgery. That will have to be factored into the decision-making process, but it might well be worth it to potentially increase the survival rate.
What Is the Right Dental Implant Procedure for You?
Of course, we have to decide the implant procedure most likely to give you success for your implants. Whether bone augmentation is recommended for you can only be decided after a careful evaluation.
To start planning for your dental implants in Columbus, OH, please call today for an appointment with implant dentist Dr. Mike Firouzian.
