Background: Several studies on one-stage surgery in the treatment of the edentulous maxilla with implant-supported fixed prostheses have reported problems with removable provisional prostheses, which can load the implants in an uncontrollable manner during healing, and jeopardize healing. Immediate splinting of the implants with a fixed provisional prosthesis has been proposed to protect the bone-implant interface.
Purpose: This study used the finite element method (FEM) to simulate stresses induced in bone tissue surrounding uncoupled and splinted implants in the maxilla because of bite force loading, and to determine whether the differences in these stress levels are related to differences in observed bone losses associated with the two healing methods.
Materials and methods: Stress levels in the maxilla were studied using the FEM program TRINITAS (Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden) in which all phases - preprocessing/modeling, equation solving, and postprocessing/evaluation - were simulated.
Results: Stress levels in bone tissue surrounding splinted implants were markedly lower than stress levels surrounding uncoupled implants by a factor of nearly 9.
Conclusion: From a mechanical viewpoint, FEM simulation supports the hypothesis that splinting reduces damage evolution in bone tissue, which agrees with clinical observations.