Dental Implant Rehabilitation After Jaw Reconstruction Assisted by Virtual Surgical Planning

To evaluate effects of preoperative virtual planning and jaw reconstruction guided by dental implant rehabilitation on dental prosthesis rehabilitation after jaw reconstruction.

Patients indicated for segmental jaw resection and who agreed to receive jaw reconstruction procedures were enrolled in the study. Appropriate surgical procedures were determined by a maxillofacial surgeon and a prosthodontist before surgery. The virtual design was created according to preoperative computed tomography. Patients were divided into navigation and non-navigation groups. Implant surgery was performed 6 months after reconstruction surgery. After treatment completion, factors such as survival rate of implants, site of reconstruction, type of graft, and type of prosthesis were compared.

In total, 29 patients were included in the study, with 16 patients in the non-navigation group and 13 in the navigation group. A total of 101 implants were inserted, and the implant success rate was 98.02% (2 implants extracted due to peri-implantitis). All patients received prosthetic treatment. Of the 13 navigation group patients, 9 received fixed implant-supported prostheses, whereas the other 4 received removable dentures. Of the 16 non-navigation group patients, 9 eventually received fixed implant-supported prostheses and 7 received removable dentures. There were no significant intergroup differences in terms of prosthesis type (P = .702). However, the proportion of fixed implant-supported prostheses in the navigation group was higher compared with the non-navigation group.

Preoperative virtual planning and dental implant rehabilitation-guided jaw reconstruction through preoperative designing can provide a good opportunity to achieve high rates of implant success and dental rehabilitation. This method can also benefit fixed implant-supported prosthetic restorations. Moreover, the use of navigation after virtual planning has no effect on the type of prosthetic reconstruction.