For most patients, getting a dental implant is a major, often crucial, decision. They expect – and deserve – a solution that functions throughout their lives, one that helps restore their quality of life. So the question is: as a clinician, how do you make sure to deliver the best possible outcome?

Since the beginning of time, human beings have dreamt of being able to predict events, how today’s actions and decisions may affect a remote future. Or put another way, how we should act today to achieve a desired result tomorrow.

Today we know that predictions based on gazing into crystal balls only work in fairy tales. However, we also know that we can predict, with considerable precision through meticulous probing and testing, how certain input factors will develop under specific conditions. And this is exactly the aim of research and documentation; to give guidance on how we should behave in order to achieve a desired result.

Long-term treatment success

In dentistry, pre-clinical studies provide evidence on the quality of a product, while clinical studies evaluate safety and efficacy of a certain type of implant treatment by monitoring patients over a period of several years. A study may, for instance, examine how the jawbone and gums react. What are they like after five years? What result can the patient expect after 10 years? 15 years? Or even 20 years?

For you as a dentist, it would be almost impossible to find out such results by yourself. You need to be able to rely on other people’s research findings, which are published in scientific journals and online.

Trusting study results

But how do you know if a study has been performed correctly, meeting the required quality standards? Your everyday work situation keeps you quite busy and usually you have only limited time, if any, for reading studies and research results in depth. So how do you solve this, trusting studies so that you dare to use it as a basis for treatment recommendation to a patient?

Together with researchers, we have compiled a checklist for you, a tool to help you look closer into the value of a study and critically read between the lines of a publication. It is important for us, because, a manufacturer of premium implant solutions, we invest significantly in product development and pre-clinical and clinical study programs. Together with our university partners, dental professionals and researchers, we are committed to sound science to maintain the highest level of quality for our products and solutions over time. All so that you and your patients can rest assured that you are making the right decision when choosing a dental implant system.

Download checklist for critical reading

 

Read more about our clinical documentation here.