IMPLANT CARE SOLUTION TITANIUM IMPLANT SCALERS | 2
IMPLANT MAINTENANCE CARE PROGRAM
Proper monitoring and maintenance are essential to ensure the durability and health of a dental implant. Following the completion of the surgical and prosthetic procedures in implant therapy, it is imperative to inform the patient about how to carry out selfperformed infection control procedures. The long-term success of implants is fundamentally dependent upon both the patient’s maintenance of effective home care and on the dental team’s administration of professional prophylaxis procedures in the dental office [10] . Professional infection control procedures are necessary to achieve long-term success of our implant treatments [6] and include the removal of hard and soft bacterial deposits on implant and suprastructure components with scalers. Great care and caution should be practiced when cleaning the dental implant and the instruments to be used should ideally be capable of removing efficiently the bacterial deposits without altering the implant surface, the implant components and the surrounding tissues [7], [12] .
In this context, it is imperative to highlight that deep instrumentation, such as “subgingival debridement” that normally is performed around teeth, is not recommended in non-surgical treatment of peri-implant disease. The reason for this difference in strategy is related to the geometry of the implant device with its threaded part and other obstacles to access. The risk of causing injury to the inflamed tissues when performing “blind” instrumentation must be emphasized.
DEBRIDEMENT OF IMPLANT SURFACE Hand curettes of different materials have been proposed as instruments for removing bacterial deposits of the supra- and subgingival peri-implant areas. Among these instruments, plastic, carbon fiber, stainless-steel and titanium curettes are included. Some studies has been performed to evaluate these different materials regarding to their cleaning efficacy and potential of alteration of the implant surface and prosthetic component, which could affect its biocompatibility, biofilm formation and therefore the implant longevity [3], [4], [8] . EFFECTS OF HAND INSTRUMENTS ON THE IMPLANT SURFACE SEM investigation of instrumented titanium implant surface shows significant- ly less scratching caused by titanium curettes compared to other commonly used metal curettes and sonic insert [9] .
1,5 1,25 1 0,75 0,5 0,25 0
A: Titanium
B: Stainless-steel
C: Plastic
D: Cavitron
E: Densonic
Average work traces and substance removal (μm) on implants and abutments after treatment with different instruments.
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