Chlorhexidine for the Treatment of Peri-Implantitis: Is it a Benison?

Chlorhexidine is the most favored and widely used antimicrobial agent for the treatment of peri-implantitis. But, not many clinicians are aware of its side effects on dental implants and its cytotoxic effects on osteoblasts. The objectives of this review are to study the effect of chlorhexidine on osteoblasts as well as on the surface topography of dental implants.

MEDLINE-PubMed (The National Library of Medicine, Washington DC) was used as a search engine. Databases were searched from 2010 to 2020 were explored using the following terms: "dental implant surface," "chlorhexidine mouthwash," "osteoblast cells," "osseointegration." From the total hits obtained, each article along with its cross-reference was manually read and filtered based on the focused question. The inclusion criteria included articles published only in English language involving human studies, randomized control trials, in vitro studies, and review articles. Exclusion criteria included studies published in languages other than English, orthodontic mini-implants, and pilot studies. The final process involved scrutinizing for any duplicate content of the hand searched articles. Following this, data was extracted from the compiled hand searched articles to obtain relevant information for the review.

Chlorhexidine alters the surface topography of dental implants and causes cell cytotoxicity. This, in turn, can hinder the re-osseointegration potential and hence cause dental implant failure. It is, therefore, recommended to discourage the use of chlorhexidine as a surface decontaminant for peri-implantitis cases and practice implementing other antimicrobial agents.