A historical overview of implant-related bone loss from Albrektsson and Zarb’s list of success criteria to Lazzara’s 2006 description of platform switching.

Introduction:

In 1986 Albrektsson and Zarb came out with their now famous list of success criteria that forms the backbone of our determination of survival versus success in implantology. One of the main factors in this list was the ‘‘normal’’ loss of bone to the first thread and then the loss of 0.2 mm of bone per year thereafter.

For many years we accepted this as gospel and an implant was deemed successful even with this loss of bone. The issue of bone loss was not a problem at all in most cases as it still meant that the implant was stable long term and in cases where the implant was correctly positioned and where there was a thick gingival morphotype there was no shine through of the metal from the implant or recession and exposure of the implant head. However… Read More

Published In: The Journal of Indian Prosthodontic Society, 2014