Quality assessment of systematic reviews regarding immediate placement of dental implants into infected sites: An overview.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM: With the increased number of published systematic reviews and in view of their wide clinical applicability, these studies must be carefully assessed before professionals begin to use their recommendations in daily practice, and above all, the methodological quality of this study design must be considered. In implant dentistry, one topic that has been arousing particular interest is the immediate placement of dental implants into infected sites.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the methodological quality of systematic reviews that evaluated the immediate placement of dental implants into infected sites.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A systematic search was performed by 2 independent reviewers of PubMed, LILACS, and ISI Web of Knowledge up to March 2016. All selected articles were published in the English language. Systematic reviews of original papers that assessed the immediate placement of dental implants into infected sites were eligible for the overview. Narrative reviews, randomized clinical trials, and case reports were excluded. Methodological quality assessment was performed using A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews.

RESULTS: Of the 5 selected systematic reviews, 3 were low methodological quality and 2 were assessed as moderate. None were high methodological quality. The first systematic review of the topic was published in 2010, and the most recent, published in 2015, was the only one that performed meta-analysis.

CONCLUSIONS: The systematic reviews that assessed the immediate placement of dental implants into infected sites were assessed as low or moderate methodological quality. The topic focus remains controversial because the implant survival rate, the main outcome considered for the implant placement prognosis, presents contradictory results.