Bone mineral density and mandibular bone quality in patients receiving dental implants: reply to Dr. Taguchi

Abstract

Dear Editor, I would like to thank Professor Akira Taguchi for his comments. In response to his questions about my research “Comparative study of axial and femoral bone mineral density and parameters of mandibular bone quality in patients receiving dental implant” [1]. I would like to reply as follows: In this study three researchers determined the cortical shape according to Klemetti’s classification. The investigators are clinicians, one of whom has a great deal of experience with this classification working in multicentric research with great number of samples, and the other two specialized in radiology and were oriented for this rating; Klemetti’s classification is not often used and is not well known in Latin America. The mandible trabecular classification was made based on the images from the panoramic radiograph, and the analyzed region was the site where the dental implant was placed. It is not likely that the implant site would be affected by the infection, as the etiological factor was removed longer than 9 years previously, as shown in Table 1 of our original article (dental loss period). This is more than enough time to eliminate any infection. The dental implants were placed according to the protocol established by Branemark [2], which states that an implant must not be placed in patients with any kind of oral infection. In our work, which assessed the mandible cortical through Klemetti’s classification, there was a relation with bone mineral density (BMD) but with no statistical significance due to the small sample size.