A review on the prevention of inflammatory periimplant diseases

Background: An impressive number of dental implants are inserted worldwide. Evolution in dental implants and simplification of surgical techniques allowed a significant increase in the number of dentists involved in implant surgery. Most of them are general dentists, are not always sufficiently formed and experienced, frequently use low-quality implants, do not adopt the proper patient selective criteria, do not adequately monitor and maintain the inserted implants, and do not report their own statistics to the dental community. Consequently, the incidence of inflammatory periimplant diseases (IPDs) has progressively increased to values significantly higher than those previously indicated by the scientific literature. Materials and Methods: Two main literature searches were undertaken in October 2018 in the PubMed Website database. Only articles written in English and published from 2008 onward were considered; 'Clinical Trial,' 'Meta analysis,' 'Observational study,' 'Review,' and 'Validation study' were selected as article type filters. The following keywords were used in the searches: 'Peri implantitis prevention' and 'Dental implant failure prevention.'Results: Preventive measures are analyzed according to the different factors that can favor the occurrence of an infection. The factors are divided into (i) implant dependent, (ii) patient dependent, and (iii) surgeon dependent. Conclusions: Scientific and clinical data confirm that when materials are selected with care, patients are carefully evaluated for factors of risk and attitude to adhere to the necessary maintenance program, and operative protocols and maintenance programs are respected dental implants can be attractive and effective tools for oral rehabilitation. Nevertheless, dentists and patients should have greater awareness that in many cases the decision to utilize dental implants cannot be taken lightly.