Ja. Jansen et al., EVALUATION OF CA-P COATINGS IN ANIMAL-EXPERIMENTS - IMPORTANCE OF STUDY DESIGN, Journal of investigative surgery, 9(6), 1996, pp. 463-479
During the last decennium the research on oral implants has increased
considerably. A lot of different implant materials and types have been
tested, but differences in study design and evaluation criteria make
comparison of the results difficult. The purpose of this paper is to d
iscuss surgical, statistical, and histological methods for testing and
evaluating the biocompatibility of oral implants. Many formulas are a
vailable for calculating the required group size. The paper describes
how such calculations can be used for the evaluation of implants and r
eviews the preferred surgical techniques. The control of various exter
nal influences that can contribute to the variability in obtained data
are discussed. After implantation, the implants with their surroundin
g tissues are retrieved and subjected to histological evaluation. Curr
ently, because of technical limitations, light microscopical sectionin
g is still the preferred preparation technique. After sectioning, quan
titative analysis has to be performed The parameters that can be evalu
ated are described. Finally, the use and potential of the described te
chniques are demonstrated with two examples.