Prosthodontic claims in the Swedish Patient Insurance Scheme

The Swedish Patient Insurance Scheme includes a guarantee insurance for prosthetic treatment. Retreatments of failures, up to 2 years after cementation of fixed prosthodontics and 1 year after delivery of removable prosthodontics, are covered by the guarantee insurance scheme. Almost all private practitioners were included in this scheme at the time of the study in 1989. During a specific period all claims were studied at the time of reporting, when annexed radiographs and so forth could be analyzed. One hundred and thirty-six claims were recorded with regard to treatment injury, reasons for remake, latency times from cementation or delivery to diagnosis, and details about the teeth or constructions involved in the claim. The dentist's opinion of the cause of the failure was also recorded. The reports covered treatment injuries, most of them root perforations during preparation for a post. The guarantee claims for single crowns concerned porcelain fractures, loss of retention, and root fractures as the most frequent failures. For fixed partial dentures the failures were recorded as loss of retention, porcelain fractures, tooth or root fractures, and metal framework fractures in that order. The dentist gave information about his/her opinion of the reason for the failure in only 38.5% of the claims. There were, however, no clear findings about the reasons for the failures.