Comparing Short Dental Implants to Standard Dental Implants: Protocol for a Systematic Review.

Background: Short dental implants have been proposed as a simpler, cheaper, and faster alternative for the rehabilitation of atrophic edentulous areas to avoid the disadvantages of surgical techniques for increasing bone volume.

Objective: This review will compare short implants (4 to 8 mm) to standard implants (larger than 8 mm) in edentulous jaws, evaluating on the basis of marginal bone loss (MBL), survival rate, complications, and prosthesis failure.

Methods: We will electronically search for randomized controlled trials comparing short dental implants to standard dental implants in the following databases: PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Scopus, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov with English language restrictions. We will manually search the reference lists of relevant reviews and the included articles in this review. The following journals will also be searched: European Journal of Oral Implantology, Clinical Oral Implants Research, and Clinical Implant Dentistry and Related Research. Two reviewers will independently perform the study selection, data extraction and quality assessment (using the Cochrane Collaboration tool) of included studies. All meta-analysis procedures including appropriate effect size combination, sub-group analysis, meta-regression, assessing publication or reporting bias will be performed using Stata (Statacorp, TEXAS) version 12.1.

Results: Short implant effectiveness will be assessed using the mean difference of MBL in terms of weighted mean difference (WMD) and standardized mean difference (SMD) using Cohen's method. The combined effect size measures in addition to the related 95% confidence intervals will be estimated by a fixed effect model. The heterogeneity of the related effect size will be assessed using a Q Cochrane test and I2 measure. The MBL will be presented by a standardized mean difference with a 95% confidence interval. The survival rate of implants, prostheses failures, and complications will be reported using a risk ratio at 95% confidence interval (P<.05).

Conclusions: The present protocol illustrates an appropriate method to perform the systematic review and ensures transparency for the completed review. The results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and social networks. In addition, an ethics approval is not considered necessary.

Trial Registration: PROSPERO registration number: CRD42016048363; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/ display_record.asp?ID=CRD42016048363 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6wZ7Fntry).