The Reuse of Healing Abutments: A Questionnaire-Based Survey

Healing abutments (HA) are used in second-stage implant surgery to create the optimal peri-implant environment. Despite being a component intended only for short-term use, it remains in the mouth for a few weeks to several months and stays in close contact with organic debris, intraoral fluids, and bacteria. Reusing the HAs modifies their surfaces, expands the coating layer's porosity, and promotes bacterial colonization at the HA-implant interface in addition to the previous contamination. Therefore, the study's goals were to determine the frequency of HA reuse, examine the sterilizing and disinfection techniques employed, and examine the factors that contributed to the dental professionals in the Indian state of Maharashtra utilizing these components again when placing dental implants. For the study, 150 dentists who worked in the field of implantology were chosen. An online questionnaire issued via email and WhatsApp was used to collect data, which started in January 2023. The survey was designed to store the demographic information and responses of the participants, and it was made available through Google Forms. By the end of February 2023, the responses had been gathered. Tables and graphs were used to present the study outcomes that were based on the statistical analysis. The analysis employed the Chi-square test, with a p-value of 0.05 deemed statistically significant. There were 150 answers in all, with 44% women and 56% men. Merely 7.4% of participants do not reuse healed abutments, compared to 92.6% who follow this procedure. The respondents were also asked about the number of times they reused the HAs, 69% of the implantologists reused the same component countless times, while 31% reused it only once. All the respondents reported sterilizing the HAs before reuse and the method used for sterilization was autoclave (96.4%) and UV chamber (3.6%). In response to a question concerning informing patients about the reuse of HAs, 77.6% of implantologists stated they do not interact with patients, while only 22.4 reported doing so. Implantologists in the state of Maharashtra, India reuse HAs and use heterogeneous methods for disinfection and autoclave sterilization.