Preserving marginal bone

As the number of patients receiving endosseous intra-oral implants worldwide continues to increase, implant longevity assumes ever greater importance as a public health issue. With progressive bone loss a significant contributory factor in potential infection and ultimate implant failure, the working group's brief was to produce a totally objective, overall assessment of marginal bone management options.

The group's members, each selected for their expertise in a specific area, reviewed the literature on marginal bone from the perspective of their own fields of study, which included investigational methodology, oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontology, immunology, biomaterials, oral physiopathology, oral rehabilitation and microbiology.

An exchange of review papers was followed by a two day group meeting at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm, hosted by group member Björn Klinge, and the amended reviews were published as a supplement to the European Journal of Oral Implantology. A public discussion was later held at the Europerio 7 meetings in Vienna this June. The potential causes of marginal bone loss were found to divide temporally, between those which occurred soon after implantation and those resulting from other, discrete provocative factors which occurred later, sometimes much later.