A review of clinical follow-up studies focusing on pretreatment conditions of abutment and clinical examination parameters

PURPOSE: When patients have their teeth taken care of, one of their biggest concerns is how long the solution will last. Studies on the longevity or prognosis of bridges published so far have mainly reported on the evaluation of the survival rate for each kind of bridge. We believe that abutments need to be researched more carefully and clinically in the future. STUDY SELECTION: A Medline search was conducted, as well as manual searching of bibliographies from relevant articles. Studies reporting the survival rate were selected from the reports mentioning the prognosis of bridges. We mainly reviewed 1) the conditions of abutments before treatments and 2) applicable parameters in each case. RESULTS: We found no study that mentioned the detailed conditions of abutments before treatment using systematic evaluation parameters. Most parameters concerned the prosthodontics itself and bacteria. Only 21. 2% described objective parameters. CONCLUSION: This review indicates the necessity for establishing a classification of abutments based on some evidence so that the after-treatment conditions can be predicted from the pre-treatment conditions. It also indicates that we have to consider objective parameters carefully when conducting prospective research on the prognosis of fixed partial dentures or when establishing a new clinical evaluation system.