Possible Causes in Breaking of Dental Implants Research

Abstract

Dental implants are becoming increasingly used in current dental practice. This increased demand has motivated manufacturers to develop varieties of product through design, but also looking for new materials used to improve surface characteristics in order to obtain a better osseointegration. But the increase in the use of implants goes to a consequent increase in the number of failures. These failures are caused either by treatment complications (peri-implantitis), by fatigue breakage under mechanical over-stress, by defective raw material, or due to errors during the insertion procedures. Although they are rare, these complications are serious in dentistry. Before to market a dental implant to clinical practitioners, the product is validated among other determinations in number of biocompatibility research. Raw material issues, details about its structure and properties are less published by the scientific literature, but all this are subject of a carefully analysis of the producers. Breaking of dental implants during surgical procedures, during the prosthetic procedures or during use (chewing, bruxism, accidents, etc.), is the second most common cause of loss of an implant after consecutive peri-implantitis rejection. Although the frequency of this type of failure for a dental implant is much smaller than those caused by the peri-implantitis, a detailed study of broken implants can explain possible causes. The use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in the study of the cleave areas explain the production mechanism of cleavages, starting from micro-fissures in the alloy used for the production of dental implants. These micro-fissures in weak areas of the implant (anti-rotational corners of the polygons, etc.) could generate a serious risk of cleavage first time when a higher force is applied.