Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 25, 2026
An Improved Mechanical Testing Method to Assess Bone-implant Anchorage
Published on: February 10, 2014
Impact of abutment microstructure and insertion depth on crestal bone changes at nonsubmerged titanium implants with
Frank Schwarz1, Ilja Mihatovic, Vladimir Golubovich
1Department of Oral Surgery, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Objectives:
To assess the impact of microgrooved abutments and the insertion depth on crestal bone changes at titanium implants with platform switch.
Materials And Methods:
A total of n = 3 titanium implants (conical abutment connection) were inserted in each hemimandible of n = 6 foxhounds with the implant shoulder (IS) located at either epicrestal, supracrestal (+1 mm), or subcrestal (-1 mm) positions and randomly (split-mouth design) connected with machined or partially microgrooved healing abutments. At 20 weeks, tissue biopsies were processed for histological (primary outcome: net bone loss - NET) analyses.
Results:
Subcrestal positioning of IS tended to be associated with higher mean NET values (mm) at both machined (subcrestal [-0.72 ± 0.32] > epicrestal [-0.34 ± 0.21] > supracrestal [+0.20 ± 0.64]) and microgrooved (subcrestal [-0.48 ± 0.25] > epicrestal [-0.13 ± 0.54] > supracrestal [+0.33 ± 0.58]) abutments. However, these differences failed to reach statistical significance.
Conclusions:
The insertion depth may have a direct influence on crestal bone-level changes at both types of abutments investigated.
