An Awareness Based Evaluation of Success of Dental Implant Treatment as Observed with and Without Dental Assistants: An Original Research Study

Abstract

Background and Aim: Implant therapy is highly crucial and requires special measures for its long term success. Any delinquency in maintenance can leads to eventual failure of implants. It is therefore highly imperative to explore this in detail. The sole endeavor of this study was to evaluate the success of dental implant treatment as observed with and without dental assistants.

Materials and Methods: Total 50 general dental practitioners were approached for this study via email in age range of 40-65 years. A preformed set of questions or questionnaire was prepared and provided to the dentists for their honest response. The study has 5 questions related to implant success as related to the assistance by dental assistant. Because implant surgeries assisted with trained dental assistants are highly précised, the end results and overall long term success of implant liable to change accordingly. The samples were factually selected by purposive sampling method. P values less than 0.05 was taken as significant.

Statistical Analysis and Results: Results showed that out of the total studied 50 general practitioners (practicing dentists), 25 found in the age group of 40-50 years. 7 were 61-65 years of age. P value was calculated to be significant (0.001). 75% of general dental practitioners were agreed when asked ‘Do you believe that dental assistants are mandatorily needed during implant surgery’. The measured p value was highly significant here (0.010). Pearson Chi-Square test conducted for all 5 studied questions wherein question number 2,3,5 confirmed significant responses.

Conclusion: Within the limitations of the study, authors concluded that participating practitioners confirmed fair and positive attitude towards assisted dental implant surgeries. All of the studied general dental practitioners had positive outlook towards assisted implants surgeries as related to their long term success. Nonetheless, findings and outcomes of this study should be clinically correlated and validated before utilizing in the clinical setups.