[Unconventional transradicular implant placement to avoid invasive surgeries: toward a potential paradigm shift]

The authors had for aim to present a new minimally-invasive protocol to rehabilitate anterior maxillary edentulism due to an impacted tooth. The implant is placed without removing the impacted tooth, which intercepts the implant trajectory. The inclusion/exclusion criteria have not been defined yet but this protocol goes against the consensual concept that no implant surface other than implant-bone interface should be tolerated. New implant-tissue interfaces are created in addition to the usual one, but this does not seem to jeopardize the prognosis of implants. The risk analysis shows that there is a growing corpus of reliable clinical and histological data to support this unconventional protocol. The overall follow-up covers from a 6-month to an 8-year period. This protocol should be more broadly documented before it can be used routinely; nevertheless it suggests that some of the leading concepts in dental implantology may be revisited.