Systematic review of implants in the alveolar cleft area

Objectives:

Systematic review of the success rate of dental implants for the replacement of missing teeth in the alveolar cleft area.

Materials and Methods:

In a systematic review Publications were included: 1) Implants in the cleft area, 2) ³10 Implants, 3) German- or English language. No randomised or controlled trials were found.

Results:

409 abstracts were identified. After reviewing the topics 48 abstracts were included. After exclusion of case reports (< 10 implants), and data on implants outside the cleft area, 11 abstracts remained. All work was retrospective. Due to inhomogeneous methods in the studies, no meta-analysis was performed.

	Patients	Implants	recall in years mean [min-max]	survival
Matsui et al. 2007	47	71	5            [2 - 10]	99 %
Duskova et al 2007	45		k.A.       [1 -  5]	87%
Landes 2006	20	25	4	80 %
Kramer et al. 2005	45	75	5,5         [1 - 11]	82 %
Deppe et al. 2004	32	35	k.A.       [1 - 10]	90 %
Cune et al. 2004	9	10	k.A.	100 %
Hartel et al. 1999	15	23	k.A.	96 %
Lilja et al. 1998	16	31	6	93 %
Jensen et al. 1998	16	20	4            [3 -  6]	90 %
Takahashi et al. 1997	19	21	k.A.       [1 -  3]	91 %
Kearns et al. 1997	14	20	4            [0 -  5]	90 %
Own patients	37	62	5            [1 – 10]	86 %

Conclusion:

The results show results of implants in the alveolar cleft comparable to those after augmentation in healthy patients (Eposito et al. 2006). On the basis of this review the rehabilitation of missing teeth in the cleft area is a well documented therapy. Soft tissue problems and the necessity of a tertiary osteoplasty are critically discussed by the authors.