Five years clinical outcome of maxillary mini dental implant overdenture treatment: A prospective multicenter clinical cohort study
Authors: Van Doorne Luc , Vandeweghe Stefan , Matthys Carine , Vermeersch Hubert , Bronkhorst Ewald , Meijer Gert , De Bruyn Hugo 
Published: June 2023

Background

The long‐term clinical outcome of mini dental implants (MDIs) to support an overdenture is underreported especially in severely atrophic maxillae and when installed flaplessly.

Purpose

The current report is a 5‐years follow‐up of the previously published 2‐ and 3‐years clinical outcome of MDIs supporting a maxillary overdenture in narrow alveolar ridges. MDI survival, marginal bone level, peri‐implant health, technical complications, and oral health related quality of life (OHIP) and respective changes over time are reported.

Materials and methods

Subjects aged 50 years or older, in need of improvement of maxillary denture retention, were included. The MDIs were 2.4 mm diameter one‐piece tapered implants, Class 4 pure Titanium, and lengths 10 or 11.5 mm. Under local anesthesia, 5–6 MDIs were placed in atrophic maxillae with a free‐handed flapless approach. One week postoperative the denture was adapted with a retentive soft reliner. The final prosthetic connection was established after 6 months with a metal‐reinforced horse‐shoe denture. Clinical outcome after 5 years was assessed with probing pocket depts (PPD), bleeding on probing (BoP), and additional cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) MDI bone level measurements were performed. Oral Health‐Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) investigated with OHIP‐14 was assessed preoperative, during provisional loading, and after final prosthetic connection up to 5 years.

Results

Initially, 31 patients (14 females and 17 males) with mean age 62.30 underwent treatment. In the provisional loading interval, 16 patients encountered 32/185 MDIs failures, resulting in a failure of 17.3%; 170 MDIs were functionally loaded in 29 patients. Additionally, 14 implants were lost in three patients, all of whom had had already previous failures.

Reimplantation of 17 MDIs were performed during the provisional loading and 2 MDI after functional loading. After 5 years, the absolute implant failure rate was 46/204 (22.5%), corresponding to a cumulative failure rate of 23.2%. Prosthetic failure was observed in four patients due to implant loss and in two patients related to excessive one‐piece implant ball attachment wear, making the 5‐years prosthetic success 80.0%.

The mean PPD and absence/presence of BoP for 149 implants at 5 years was 4.3 and 0.2 mm, respectively. Average mesial‐distal‐vestibular‐palatal bone loss in the interval 2–5 years was 0.08 mm. No statistically significant difference in marginal MDI bone loss between male or female (p = 0.835), smoking and nonsmoking (p = 0.666) was observed. The five‐years total measured CBCT interdental bone level (mesial and distal) correlates with the 5‐years PPD (Pearson 0.434; p = 0.01). After 5 years, OHRQoL with the treatment procedure was assessed in 27/31 participants. Decreasing mean total OHIP‐14 scores with improved OHRQoL, was observed in 27/31 participants, with values of 21.3 at baseline to 15.6 at the time of provisional loading which significantly (p = 0.006) decrease to 7.3 at the final prosthetic connection. The next 3–5 years further decrease was observed with 6.5 and 4.96, respectively.

Conclusions

Maxillary MDIs for overdentures are an accessible and acceptable treatment option. Although after 5 years between one fifth and one fourth of the MDIs were lost, prosthetic success remains 80.0% and high OHRQoL could be achieved.