Mini dental implant overdenture as an alternative treatment (systematic review)

Background: Patients with narrow alveolar ridges requiring dental implants may be managed by residual ridge augmentation or guided bone regeneration procedures followed by the placement of conventional diameter implants. All these procedures need more time, more cost, and more clinician experience. Mini implants are an alternative option in case of the reduced residual alveolar ridge. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the crestal bone changes, survival rates, and patient satisfaction with mini dental implant. Methodology: An electronic searching was performed in the following databases, Pubmed (1990 to 25 October 2016) and Cochran (1999 to 2016). In addition, hand searching was performed in implant-related journals and through the references of included studies. Result: Four articles resulted after the final filtration, from which three studies were randomized controlled trials and one non-randomized controlled trial. The follow-up period was extended at least 1 year in all studies. The results of the included studies reveal that the marginal bone loss, survival rate, and patient satisfaction of the mini implant were comparable to those resulting from the conventional implants. Conclusion: No significant difference was observed between the mini implant and the conventional implants regarding the marginal bone loss, implant survival rate, and patient satisfaction. However, this review depends on few numbers of studies that accompanied with a high degree of bias, so more evidence to validate this treatment is still necessary. Clinical Significance: The flapless technique of the small implant diameter offers the advantage of less invasion and less trauma to the tissue. Furthermore, the mini implants approach makes promise solution for those patients with medical and/or financial problems to use conventional implants so that they increase the clinical applications of dental implants.