Diabetes Effects on Dental Implant Survival

The goal of this review is to critically appraise the clinical evidence guiding our application of dental implant therapy relative to glycemic control for patients with diabetes. Our initial searches of the literature identified 129 publications relevant to both dental implants and diabetes. These were reduced to 17 clinical studies for inclusion. Reported implant failure rates in these 17 reports ranged from 0 to 14.3% for patients with diabetes. Unfortunately, the majority of these reports lacked sufficient information relative to glycemic control to allow the application of the findings toward clinical care. However, clinical evidence is emerging from several investigations that diabetes and glycemic control are important considerations that may require modifications to therapeutic protocols, but may not be contraindications to implant therapy in diabetes patients. Also, a potentially important role for implant therapy to support oral function in diabetes dietary management remains to be determined.