COMPUTATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES IN THREADED DENTAL IMPLANT RESEARCH

Objective: To provide an insight into various approaches used by researchers working in the field of stress analysis and design of dental implants and thereby proposing guidelines for further work in view of improving the success of dental implants. This paper takes an overview of Finite element method (FEM) and experimental methods used for dental implant research. Method: A literature search was conducted using the keywords dental implant, FEA, implant-bone interface, stress analysis of dental implants etc. Approximately 225 articles were selected based on their titles for reading abstracts and about 70 amongst them were shortlisted based on their content for complete reading and data extraction. Result: Role of various parameters related to dental implant and surrounding bone on stress distribution in FEA and experimental studies was reviewed. Conclusion: Based on the review it was concluded that accuracy of computational studies depends upon many factors which are generally approximated to reduce complexity of computational model. Review of experimental studies showed that a simpler method which would enable in vivo measurements is still desired.