Compliance with supportive periodontal/peri-implant therapy: A systematic review

The present systematic review aimed at assessing the degree of compliance with supportive periodontal/peri-implant therapy as well as identifying patient-related factors that could potentially play a role on patient compliance.

Electronic and manual literature searches were carried out to assess patient compliance during maintenance. Main outcomes were compliance definition, degree of compliance and patient-related factors. Owing to the heterogeneity of the data reported across the studies, descriptive statistics were performed to shed light on compliance rate and the patient-related factors.

A total of 39 articles were included. No consensus regarding the definition of "compliance" was found in the analysed literature. The percentage of fully compliers and non-compliers ranged between 3.3%-86.8% and 1.69%-64.4%, respectively. Smoking habit and history of periodontal disease were found to be associated with patients' compliance. Inadequate information/motivation was found as the main patient-reported reason for non-compliance.

Despite the high variability across studies, compliance with the supportive periodontal/peri-implant maintenance therapy was found to be unsatisfactory. Attitudes, psychological traits and construct associated with compliance remain largely unknown, and still, lack of information and motivation are paramount to be addressed during the periodontal/implant therapy to increase patient compliance.