Purpose: To measure the volume effect on maintaining a sealing around immediately rehabilitated dental implants in a comparison between customized and conventional provisional crowns at a 3-year follow-up.
Materials and methods: A single crown supported by a dental implant was used as a rehabilitation strategy for a failing tooth. The primary predictor was the type of immediate restoration with custom or conventional provisional crowns; a secondary predictor was tooth position: incisor, canine, or premolar. In order to accurately measure the width between buccal and palatal plates at the alveolar margin in a comparison between preoperative (before tooth extraction) and postoperative (at the 3-year follow-up) radiographs, two cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans were three-dimensionally analyzed and superimposed.
Results: Seventy-six patients, rehabilitated with single implants, were selected (31 implants belonging to the custom group and 45 to the conventional group). In patients treated with conventional restorations, a significant shrinkage (-0.6 ± 1.2 mm with P = .002) was registered. On the other hand, the bone change registered for the custom restoration group appeared negligible, with a nonsignificant and slight increase in width (+0.2 ± 0.7 mm). When the subgroups regarding the implant sites were investigated, the decrease in width was very limited for the canine tooth in the custom group (-0.3 ± 0.2 mm), whereas the shrinkage at the canine in the standard group appeared to be significantly higher (-1.5 ± 0.7 mm with P = .0001).
Conclusion: An anatomically contoured provisional restoration may provide a strategy to stimulate peri-implant soft tissue healing, minimize loss of buccal bone plate at the marginal level, and maintain pristine volume in the alveolar bone better than noncustomized restorations.