A Dental Implant is certainly one of the more efficacious and popular treatments for missing teeth.
But is just looking at cheap dental implant surgery in black and white terms doing a disservice to the experience of our maxillofacial patients?
Today we look at the study:
Patients’ experiences of dental implant treatment: A literature review of key qualitative studies, Kashbour WA, Rousseau NS, Ellis JS, Thomason JM, 2015
Experience of Dental Implant Surgery
This study examined qualitative findings of past studies on patients experience with Dental Implants to determine the more existential nature of their experiences. We know these treatments are effective and safe, what we haven’t looked at is the experiential nature of outcomes.
Studying literature based offline and online on databases such as PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, Cochrane Database and Google Scholar they used qualitative research methods and qualitative analysis to get a feel for the patients experience with dental implants treatment.
Two types of implant prostheses gave significant insights into the maxillofacial patients experience. These were ISOD (implant-supported overdenture) and FISP (fixed implant supported prostheses).
In general they found that maxillofacial patients undergoing FISP thought of implant treatment as a process of ‘normalisation’. In a sense the patients believed that the dental implant treatment would eventually appear and feel like natural teeth.
On the other hand patients with ISOD put a greater emphasis on the more practical and functional advantages of their maxillofacial implant treatment. Of importance were the social benefits they believed they would gain following the treatment.
The real value in the study comes in the summaries of recent findings in the experiences of dental implant patients and In the future we will be further examining the maxillofacial patient experience. At Brisbane Maxillofacial Surgery we believe patient experience is very important so this research needs more time and funding.
As maxillofacial surgeons it is important to not only provide excellent medical care but to also ensure our patients have the best chance of experiencing a fulfilling treatment that leaves them satisfied.
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