A systematic review of survival of single implants as presented in longitudinal studies with a follow-up of at least 10 years.

Background: Placement of single implants is one of the most common applications for implant treatment. Millions of patients have been treated worldwide with osseointegrated implants and many of these patients are treated at a young age with a long expected remaining lifetime. Therefore longterm evidence for such treatment is important.

Aim: To report patient treatment, implant and implant-supported single crown survival over at least a 10-year period of follow-up.

Material And Methods: After reviewing long-term publications, included by Jung et al (2012), a complementary PubMed search was performed using the same search strategy for the period September 2011 to November 2014. Data on implant and single implant crown treatment survival were compiled from included studies.

Results: Four new publications were identified from the 731 new titles. They were added to an earlier list of five manuscripts by Jung et al (2012) , which were already included. Accordingly, nine publications formed the database of available long-term evaluations. The database consisted of 421 patients altogether, provided with 527 implants and 522 single crowns. From the 367 patients that were followed-up for at least 10 years (87%), altogether 502 implants were still in function at the completion of the studies (95.3%), supporting 432 original and 33 remade single implant crowns. Based on patient level and implant level data, implant survival reached 93.8% and 95.0%, respectively. The corresponding survival rate for original crown restorations was 89.5%.

Conclusions: Single implant treatment is a predicable treatment over a 10-year period of time, with no indication of obvious changes in implant failure rate between 5 and 10 years. However, replacement of new single crowns must be considered during the follow-up as part of regular maintenance. Compared to the number of treated patients worldwide, the available numbers with a follow-up of 10 years was low.