The clinical outcome of bone cement in dental implant insertion – A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: To accelerate the process of restoring dental implants, achieving primary stability is of prime importance for effective osseointegration. The various bone substitute materials such as autograft (golden standard), allograft, xenograft, and alloplast are used to improve the stability of an implant and also as an aid in bone formation. The use of bone cements, among the alloplast material, is a relatively new premise in oral implantology. These have been extensively used in orthopedic surgery to secure an implanted prosthesis and to replace or bind bone fragments, resulting from trauma, and to fill cavities. This article aims to review the literature for the use of bone cements in oral implantology and evaluate its prospective use in future to secure dental implants. Materials and Methods: PubMed search was carried out using keywords such as “Bone Cements,” “Oral Implantology,” “Cements Fix Implants with Bone,” and “Cements to Grow Bone.” Of the 1422 articles, 1015 were selected after eliminating the duplicates. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 383 abstracts were assessed for relevance, of which 17 full-text articles were selected. Five articles were excluded with reasons and 12 eligible articles were included in the systematic review. Results: Eight studies out of the 12 concluded that bone cement could be a viable alternative to allogenic or other graft materials tested. Four articles were inconclusive or showed no significant difference. However, the quality of available evidence was poor as 10 out of the 12 studies were animal trials and 2 were in vitro studies. Due to considerable heterogeneity of data, meta-analysis could not be done. Conclusion: Bone cements can be considered a possible alternative to the existing graft materials. However, further research including controlled trials with human subjects needs to be undertaken to establish its potential.