Definitive Abutments Placed at Implant Insertion and Never Removed: Is It an Effective Approach? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

Purpose To assess whether repeated abutment disconnections and reconnections have any impact on peri-implant bone resorption and soft tissue healing. Materials and Methods Electronic and manual searches were conducted for English-language articles published up to March 2017 that identified a relation between repeated disconnections of implant abutments (PA group) and prosthetic or implant failures, complications, marginal bone loss (MBL), soft tissue healing, and esthetic evaluation (pink esthetic score [PES]) after at least 1 year of function compared with implants receiving a final abutment at the time of implant placement (DA group). Results Fourteen articles (535 patients with 994 impla…