The accuracy of guided surgery via mucosa-supported stereolithographic surgical templates in the hands of surgeons with little experience

Objectives This prospective study analyzed the accuracy of implant placement with mucosa-supported stereolithographic guides, executed by inexperienced surgeons supervised by an experienced colleague. Material and methods For the accuracy analysis, 75 OsseoSpeed implants, placed in 17 fully edentulous jaws (16 patients) using a mucosa-supported stereolithographic guide (IMPLANT SAFE Guide, DENTSPLY Implants) and the Facilitate protocol, were included. DICOM images of the pre-surgical planning and the post-surgical CBCT were matched using the Mimics((R)) software (Materialise Dental). These data were compared with the data (12 jaws, 52 implants) of an experienced surgeon (Vercruyssen etal. Journal of Clinical Periodontology 2014; doi:). Results The global deviation at the coronal and apical point was 0.9mm (SD 0.5) and 1.1mm (SD 0.5), respectively. Depth deviations were 0.5mm (SD 0.5) and 1.1mm (SD 0.5), respectively, and the angular deviation was 2.8 degrees (SD 1.5 degrees). These deviations were statistically not inferior to the deviations of the experienced surgeon and also within the range of deviations reported by several systematic reviews. Conclusion Within the limitations of this study and for the above-mentioned surgical protocol, inexperience of the surgeon had no influence on the accuracy of implant placement in fully edentulous jaws, when all steps needed for the procedure are supervised by experienced dentists.