A Clinical Paradigm and Pertinent Literature Review for Placing Short Implants

Placing an implant to replace missing teeth can be challenging because of lack of vertical and/or horizontal bone ridge, maxillary sinus pneumatization and inferior alveolar nerve position. Additional surgical procedures may be necessary, with varying predictability, where vertical augmentation being the least predictable. An alternative option is to place short implants and exclude the additional surgical grafting procedures. By reviewing studies, this paper explores the predictability of the short implants for use in the methods. Bicon SHORT® implants are available in 5 and 6 mm lengths and seem to be able to overcome such limits but more long-term studies are still needed to determine long-term prognosis and success of short implants in terms of them being comparable or equal to longer or standard length implants.