Current technology for identifying dental implants: a narrative review

Abstract

A search was performed on the current methods of identifying dental implants between January 2000 through Feb 2020 using online databases for articles published in English. The search was performed using the Google, Rutgers library, PubMed, MEDLINE databases via OVID using the following keywords: implant types identification by x-ray imaging, forensic identification of dental implant, surface types, threaded, non-threaded, software identification, recent technologies, which evaluated different methods in the identification of dental implants and its clinical importance for the dentist and the patient. Of the 387 articles found in initial search results, 10 met the inclusion criteria set for this review. These 10 studies were directly related to the identification of different implant systems. Many studies have indicated identifying dental implants as problematic due to many confounding factors, and the difficulty in finding the specific parts for the dental implant itself. The contribution of digital dentistry is critical. Factors like increasing number of implant manufacturers, dental tourism, and cost, make it difficult to detect and match dental implants by dentists during the chairside time.