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Jyoti Sonkar, B.D.S., M.S.D., M.P.H., clinical assistant professor in the College of Dental Medicine, recently published an article in the Journal of Implant Dentistry. "Retrospective study to identify associations between clinician training and dental implant outcome and to compare the use of MATLAB with SAS" explores issues of clinician training in the success of dental implant outcomes.

According to the article, in 2006 about five and a half million dental implants were placed in the U.S. Even if the failure rate of these implants is only 2%, we can expect over 275,000 implant failures each year. With an increasing number of dentists placing implants, it is evident that limiting implant failures should be a treatment goal for the modern dental practice.

Sonkar’s study examined clinician training as a variable in implant outcome, examining the success rates among the residents in different departments at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Dentistry. Sonkar reviewed dental records from January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2015, studying implants performed by residents from the School of Dentistry’s departments of periodontics, prosthodontics and oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS). In total, 1,449 implants were included in the study.

Sonkar concluded that implants placed by periodontics residents had the highest success rate (94.14%), followed by those of prosthodontics residents (91.48%) and OMFS residents (89.64%). The study showed a correlation between the success rate of implants and the number of years of training obtained by the clinician. Implants placed by third-year periodontics and OMFS residents had a success rate of 94.20%, while those placed by second-year residents had a success rate of 89.38%, and those placed by first-year residents were 88.6% successful.

Sonkar stated in the article that further studies will be necessary to identify the reasons for the differences in implant success rates.