Abstract
Selection Criteria
An electronic search was conducted from April 2018 to January 2000 in PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases. Also, the references of relevant literature were manually searched. Only the randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published in English that had a follow-up period of at least 1 year and included at least 10 patients per group were selected. Two independent reviewers screened the titles and abstracts for eligibility assessment, performed data extraction, and evaluated the quality of the included articles by using the Cochrane tool. Any disagreement was discussed.
Key Study
Factor In this review, the key study factor was the impact of immediate and conventional loading protocols on survival rates, marginal bone losses, and soft-tissue changes around a single implant placed to restore a missing tooth in the esthetic zone (maxillary anterior area). All included articles were RCTs.
Main Outcome Measure
In this review, the outcome measures were the survival rate, marginal bone loss, and soft-tissue change.
Main Results
This review included 7 RCTs that compared immediate and conventional loading of single implants. All of these trials had an unclear risk of bias and covered a total of 386 single implants (189 immediate and 197 conventional loaded implants).
The results of the meta-analysis did not show any differences between the treatment protocols with respect to implant survival rates with a relative risk of 0.99 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.95-1.02), marginal bone losses (mean difference = 0.03 mm; 95% CI = -0.09 mm to 0.15 mm), and soft-tissue changes (mean difference = 0.30 mm; 95% CI = -0.25 mm to 0.85 mm).
Conclusion
Immediate and conventional loading protocols demonstrated similar performances in terms of implant survival rates, marginal bone losses, and soft-tissue changes in single implant-supported crowns placed in the esthetic zone.