Does Change in Thread Shape Influence the Pull Out Strength of Mini Implants? An In vitro Study.

Abstract

Mini implants form a valuable source for absolute anchorage thereby helping in achieving ideal treatment outcome. Stability of the mini implant is one of the important factors affecting the success of mini implants. Thread shape is a critical factor in the engineering design of mini implant, which affects the primary stability. To evaluate the effects of thread shape on the pull out strength of mini implants. Mini implants of five different designs in thread shape (reverse buttress, buttress, 75° joint profile with flutes, trapezoidal and trapezoidal fluted) were used with 10 screws in each group. The mini implants were loaded on to the polyurethane foam block (Sawbones pacific research lab, USA) perpendicular to the surface and the pull out strength was tested using the Instrom testing machine. The control group consisted of mini implants with reverse buttress thread shape. One-way ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc tests were used to compare the pull out strength of the mini implants within as well as between the different groups. The mean in the pull out tests ranged from 13.45 N (trapezoidal) to 61 N (trapezoidal fluted). The tukey post-hoc tests showed a statistically significant difference of 34.5 N between the control group and the trapezoidal fluted group. The level of statistical significance showed p< 0.05. Trapezoidal fluted mini implants showed the highest pull out strength when compared to mini implants with other thread designs used in this study. Further studies with the use of Finite Element Method (FEM) and foam blocks of higher density would be required to evaluate the performance of this new thread design.