The Dental Implant Maintenance

Abstract

As dental implant treatment has become a part of mainstream dental therapy, it is imperative to implement dental implant maintenance guidelines to achieve the long-term success of implant prostheses. Earlier, the success of a dental implant was mainly focused on the surgical phase to achieve good primary stability, with time, this belief has taken a major paradigm shift towards implementing and ensuring a periodic recall and following a maintenance phase for dental implants to achieve long-term success. As the dental team strives to attain and maintain the long-term success of implant prostheses, the patient should also recognize that their contribution towards the success of implant prostheses is also equally indispensable. This chapter highlights the importance of maintaining oral hygiene in implant rehabilitated patients and enumerates the implant maintenance protocol to be followed along with the different in-home and in-office procedures which can be implemented to achieve long-term success of the implant and peri-implant structures.