Complications and Failure in Dental Implants

Dental implant is a good dental rehabilitation of the missing teeth. Scientific literature has evidenced that implant therapy obtains a success rate greater than 90%. With the increasing acceptance of dental implantation as a viable tooth replacement therapy, complications and failure rates have also increased proportionately. Complications and failures in implant dentistry can range from minor to major, reversible to irreversible, and problematic to detrimental. As a result, these clinical problems cause frustrations and disappointments for patients and dental professionals and cast doubts on the success of dental implant therapy. These problems can have many different levels of undesirable consequences that may lead to compromised or less than optimal clinical results for the patients, non-productive wasted clinical chair time, extra financial burden to the patient and dentist, create antagonistic tension in patients, and ultimately affect the reputation of the dentist and the profession. Complaints to regulatory colleges and litigations involving implant dentistry have also increased over the past decade.