Dental Implant Failure in Post-Menopausal Women on Oral Bisphosphonates: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

A systematic review was designed to investigate the effect of treatment with oral bisphosphonate (BP) on osseointegration of dental implants and the incidence of BP-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (BRONJ) in postmenopausal women. Multiple electronic databases, including MEDLINE (PubMed), EMBASE, and SCOPUS, were searched to find all eligible articles published since 1990. All titles and abstracts retrieved by searching information sources were evaluated independently by 2 authors against the eligibility criteria. The number of cases ranged from 11 to 235, and the number of controls ranged from 14 to 343. Alendronate was used in all other studies. Risedronate was used in 6 studies, while ibandronate was used in 4 studies. The number of implants in cases ranged from 25 to 1267, while in controls, the number of implants ranged from 28 to 1450. The time between the placement of implant and the follow-up visit ranged from 4–6 months to 8 years. The results show that out of 2582 placed implants, 50 (1.94%) failed in BP-treated patients. This is while out of 4050 placed implants, 188 (4.6%) failed in the non-BP group. The results from the meta-analysis demonstrated that BP therapy is significantly associated with increased implant failure rates (RR = 1.73 [95% CI, 1.03–2.83], P = .04). Overall, the qualitative assessment of this review suggests that oral treatment with BPs in postmenopausal women does not increase the rate of dental implant failure. Thus, further studies with larger sample sizes should compare BP and non-BP groups in regard to dental implants.