A study has found placing implants immediately after extracting teeth in patients with osteoporosis can produce good results.
The study, published in Journal of Oral Implantology, looked at osteoporosis, a condition where sufferers lose bone mass and strength throughout their bodies.
Common treatment for osteoporosis is a class of drugs called bisphosphonates, which can have major complications that affect already weak bones, preventing them from getting blood and causing them to die, a condition in the jawbone known as bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw.
The study
The authors of this study looked to discover whether a patient with osteoporosis with bisphosphonates is at greater risk of experiencing this serious complication in the jawbone.
They looked at patients who were 54 years of age or older and were receiving dental implants and compared the success of those implants in patients with and without osteoporosis.
Dental surgeons extracted all of the remaining teeth from each of the patients, half of which were suffering from osteoporosis, and immediately replaced them with dental implants, then examining them one year later to determine whether the implants were working.
The results showed that there was some bone loss but that it was similar in both groups of patients.
All 24 patients in the study had good contact between the surface of the implants and the bone and the authors found that installing the implants immediately after extracting the remaining teeth reduced the number of surgeries, sped up the overall process, increased patient comfort, and produced good results even in patients with osteoporosis.
