A retrospective study on 83 one-piece implants installed in resorbed maxillae.

One-piece implants incorporate the trans-mucosal abutment facing the soft tissues as an integral part of the implant. The interface between the trans-mucosal component and the implant is generally located in the neighborhood of the alveolar bone level. One-piece implant are usually welded together and immediately loaded. Since no report on one-piece implants placed in maxilla is available, a retrospective study was performed. Twelve patients (5 females and 7 males) were enrolled in the present study. A total of 83 one-piece implants (Diamond, BIOIMPLANT, Milan, Italy) were inserted. Cox analysis was used to detect if any of the studied variables (i.e. diameter, length, replaced tooth position and welding) has an impact both on failures (SVR, i.e. lost fixtures) and/or on success (SCR, i.e. crestal bone resorption around implants lower than 1.5 mm). In our series SVR and SCR were 86.7 (i.e. 11 implants lost) and 97.2 (i.e. 2 failures out of the remaining 72 implants), respectively. Statistical analysis demonstrated that replaced tooth position has a direct impact on survival (i.e. lost implants) with a worse survival for premolars and molars (80.1% survival) respect to incisors and canine (92.7% survival) (p=0.03). No studied variables (i.e. diameter, length, replaced tooth position and welding) have impact on clinical success (i.e. crestal bone resorption). Since maxilla has a lower bone quality respect to mandible, we concluded that one-piece implants are reliable devices for maxilla rehabilitation.