Heavy smoking can cause problems with dental implants in the lower jaw, new research has found.
A recent study compared how well bones heal in smokers and non-smokers when they had dental implants to replace missing teeth at the back of their lower jaw.
It found heavy smoking causes bone to heal around the implant more slowly, although after three months the healing process catches up with that of non-smokers.
Despite this the study concluded heavy smoking causes greater bone loss around the implants and creates larger soft-tissue pockets.
Heavy smoking
The negative effects of smoking are well documented, however few studies have looked at the effect on the lower jaw.
Researchers from The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, China, concluded that smoking won’t effect the overall success of the implant but suggest surgeons may need to change their standard implant schedule for patients that smoke.
The full text for the article ‘Effect of heavy smoking on dental implants placed in male patients posterior mandibles: a prospective clinical study,’ was published in the Journal of Oral Implantology and is available at http://joionline.org/doi/full/10.1563/aaid-joi-D-16-00078.
