Influence of clinician gender, age, and geographic work location on the relative rankings of risk factors for biological complications with dental implant therapy.

Statement Of Problem: Clinician perceptions of risk factors influencing biologic complications with dental implants are poorly understood but are relevant to how clinicians manage conversations with patients seeking dental implant therapy.

Purpose: The purpose of this clinician survey was to assess the relative ranking of biologic risk factors with dental implants identified via the history, clinical examination, and clinical decisions and postimplant placement findings.

Materials And Methods: A 10-item survey instrument was tested, refined, and distributed to past participants of the Future Leaders in Prosthodontics (FLIP) workshop series asking for their opinion on the relative ranking of commonly identified risk factors in the areas of patient history, clinical examination, and clinical decisions and postimplant placement findings. Descriptive statistics and frequency tables were developed to identify age groupings, geographic work location, and gender. Group differences with respect to risk factor rankings were identified by using Kruskal-Wallis H tests, and, if significant, paired comparisons were conducted using the Mann-Whitney U test with adjustments for Type I error (α=.05).

Results: Significant differences were found by gender, age, and geographic work location. Women viewed "implant placement in site of previous implant loss" (P=.013) and "treated moderate or severe chronic periodontitis" (P=.021) as having significantly greater relative importance than did men, yet men ranked "implant position closer than 1.5 mm from adjacent tooth" (P=.023), "currently using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs (SSRI)" (P=.001), and "heavy plaque index (PI>50%)" (P=.023) as having significantly greater relative importance than did women. Significant differences were found by geographic work location of practice with respondents from Australasia viewing "treatment plan includes prostheses that limit access for cleaning resulting in an increase in bacterial load" as having greater relative importance than did respondents from Africa (P<.001) and from South America (P<.001). Respondents from South America viewed "implant lacks 2.0 mm of attached tissue around implants" as having greater relative importance than did respondents from Australasia (P<.002) or Asia (P<.001).

Conclusions: Clinicians viewed the relative importance of risk factors for biologic complications with dental implants differently, and those differences varied by clinicians' age, gender, and geographic location of practice.