Effect of Consecutive Removal and Placement of Abutments during Prosthetic Procedures on an Increase in Proinflammatory Cytokine Levels around Dental Implants

Objective: To evaluate the effect of repeated removal and placement of abutments during prosthetic stages on increasing proinflammatory cytokine levels around dental implants. Material and Methods: All the patients with dental implants, referring to the prosthodontics private office during a 3-month period, were examined in relation to the health of the implants and included in the present study based on inclusion criteria; the patients had a multi-unit abutment on one side of the jaw and a conventional healing abutment on the implant on the other side of the jaw. Samples of gingival crevicular fluid were taken from all the eligible subjects for immunological analyses. The samples were taken from the sulcus around each implant in each subject. The samples were sent to the immunology laboratory for determination of IL-6 and IL-1β proinflammatory cytokines with the use of an ELISA kit. Data were analyzed with SPSS 16 and Descriptive statistics and T-test was used. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results: The results showed that the mean concentrations of IL-1β and IL-6 in the group with multi-unit abutment were less than those in the conventional abutment group. In addition, comparison of the means of IL-6 and IL-1β concentrations showed that in both groups the concentration of IL-6 was higher than that of IL-1β. Conclusion: The use of multi-unit abutments resulted in less inflammation compared to the use of conventional two-segment abutments, which require repeated removal and placement during the prosthetic stage.