Smoking increases dental implant failure risk. However, a new type of dental implant surface may reduce failure rates in smokers.
New Dental Implant Type May Help Smokers
The new study compared smokers and never-smokers for dental implant survival. It was also comparing two different types of surface roughening on the rate of dental implant survival.
Surface roughening helps dental implants integrate with your bone by giving bone material something to grip.”Turned” dental implants use a sand-blasting type method to give them some roughness. This is a tried-and-true method of roughening and gives good results. “Oxidized” dental implants use a chemical process to create surface roughening. This newer method seems to work very well, but it has less data to support it.
In this new study, 40 smokers and 40 never-smokers with periodontitis risk were given a combination of turned and oxidized dental implants to see how well these implants performed. The results showed that the overall survival rate for smokers was 90% and never-smokers was 97%. These are pretty standard results.
What was really special about this study comes when you compare the two types of implant surfaces. Oxidized dental implants performed much worse for never-smokers, but they performed much better for smokers. In smokers, the failure rate for dental implants was nearly five times more overall, though there were no failures among the dental implants with the oxidized surface type.
High Hopes, but No Sure Cure
This study underscores the need to quit smoking to preserve your dental implants. The new oxidized surface may help smokers to keep their dental implants, but more research is needed to confirm this result.
If you want to learn more about how to get great results from your dental implants, please contact My Hills Dentist in Baulkham Hills, helping patients across the north Sydney suburbs.
