As a result of the increase of the life expectancy, elder people live with diverse diseases or conditions like systemic disorders, immune-related disorders, and psychiatric issues. Consecutively, practicing clinicians are faced with serving dental implant treatments in such a population comprised of medical and demographic characteristics. Most commonly, implant therapy is performed among patients above middle ages; therefore, clinicians often encounter medically compromised patients. The patients are usually with adverse conditions like bleeding disorders, bone diseases, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and/or immunologic conditions like cancer therapy, steroid or immunosuppressive or antiresorptive medication, alcoholism, smoking, and many others. Nevertheless, only few conditions could be stated for contraindication to dental implant therapy. Besides the broad range of the mentioned dental implant comorbidities smoking seems less prevalent compared to the general population. Dental implants in smoking patients are certainly affected in relation to the failure rate, marginal bone loss, and some other risks of postoperative complications. Hence, smoking or other similar conditions could be accounted as a chronic systemic disorder just like diabetes mellitus or drug usage. Briefly, it seems that establishing the medical and demographic conditions prior to implant therapy along with controlling the systemic diseases or disorders may be more important than the presence of compromise.
Part of the book: Clinical Trials in Vulnerable Populations
Native tooth has a unique design to serve perfect stomatognathic function and esthetics which could never be replaced with another material or apparatus if it is lost. Over the past few decades, screw-type endosseous implants have been considered to be as the gold standard for the rehabilitation of edentulism owing to the similarity with the anatomical root shape and location inside the alveolar bone. They have been widely investigated so as to find out the ideal characteristics. Further researches have focused on the cervical region of the dental implant because the maximum stress is pronounced around the implant neck. The ideal characteristics indicate that a wide implant neck for better stress distribution, and a large surface area with a minimal thread geometry for a better long term crestal bone stability. Along with the growing clinical knowledge and digital technology, an innovative and noteworthy approach for implant dentistry, custom root analogue implant (RAI), has evolved. With the computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) methods, original and optimized characteristics could be transferred to the custom dental implants just as performing an original root replacement.
Part of the book: Human Teeth