Stress-based performance comparison of dental implants by finite element analysis

Abstract

The geometric shape of a dental implant plays an important role on the osteo-integration process. The purpose of this paper is to study the biomechanical behavior of different commercial dental implants and to analyse how thread profile may affect the stress concentration and distribution. Three different commercially-available dental implants were considered and acquired by means of a no-contact reverse engineering system. Stresses at bone–implant interface, in presence of perfect and not-perfect osteo-integration, were numerically evaluated by means of finite element (FEM) analyses applying occlusal and lateral loads. The results show more dangerous stresses at implant–bone interface in the case of not-perfect osteo-integration and stresses gradient enough uniform around the threads in the case of osteo-integration. In particular, the implant with the lowest thread-pitch exhibits the lowest bone damage. This confirms the crucial role of the geometric shape of the implant to reduce bone induced stresses and bone damage. The structural and functional connection between living bone and implant is a key issue in implantology field. When a guest device is installed in the living bone, many clinical responses may arise, such as inflammatory processes or osteo-integration failure. The results of this study can give useful information to understand the influence of the implant features and to appropriately apply it in the science of dental implants with the aim to reduce the potential implant failure.