Zirconia Implants and Marginal Bone Loss: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Studies

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide sufficient information on the clinical outcome of zirconia implants, mainly observing the survival rate and marginal bone loss (MBL), with a minimum follow-up of 12 months, to verify the adoption of ceramics as a rational possibility for dental implants.

Materials And Methods: A systematic electronic search through the PubMed (MEDLINE) and EMBASE databases was performed by two independent reviewers to identify clinical studies published between January 2005 and April 2019 containing a minimum of 10 patients per study and 12 months of follow-up after functional loading. References from the selected articles were manually reviewed for further studies.

Results: From the initial 1,225 articles retrieved, 19 met all the inclusion criteria. The marginal bone remodeling accounted for mean losses of 0.8 mm (95% CI: 0.60 to 1.00 mm) and 1.01 mm (95% CI: 0.72 to 1.29 mm) at 1 year and 2 years postloading, respectively. The failure rate of 6.8% was calculated for a mean follow-up period of 2.75 years, where the prevalence of early failure, late failure, and implant fracture was 3.4%, 1.7%, and 1.7%, respectively. The meta-analysis associated with the survival rate of one- and two-piece zirconia dental implants was hindered due to the lack of confidence interval or standard deviation information in most of the included articles.

Conclusion: Zirconia implants presented MBL values consistent with the standard in the global consensus, high survival rates, and considerable clinical results at short-term observation periods following prosthetic delivery.