Defining success

Defining success can be a difficult thing in dentistry, and very rarely is it ever a simple case of black or white. Even scientific literature fails to fully define what success really means. For example if we are talking about implants, then the language we use would not be centred on ‘success’, but on ‘survival’ instead – in other words, is the implant still there?

In my own field of endodontics, there have been many different versions of success described by the profession. In the early days our field defined it as absolute bone healing with no lesions, no pain and no symptoms. However it was later recognised that this is an extremely stringent criterion, and the definition was changed to recognise the fact that shrinking lesions with perhaps some scar tissue is also a success of sorts.

When some implant dentists talk about their high success rates, they talk about survival and not about other adverse outcomes such as bad taste, bad smell, or bone loss. I think this adds a great deal of confusion to the debate and certainly doesn’t help in forming a fair and accurate description of the treatment’s outcome.