MICROBIOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DENTAL IMPLANTS REMOVEDFOR INCOMPLETE OSSEOINTEGRATION

Dental implants may share both severe infection and incomplete osseoin tegration in the absence of obvious clinical signs of infection. While microbiological data have been collected on peri-implant infections, no previous studies have investigated microbiologically incompletely o sseointegrated implants. This paper presents microbiological and scann ing electron microscopy observations on 30 implants showing incomplete osseointegration. All the 30 implants were colonised by bacterial spe cies that are not commonly isolated from the human oral cavity and per iodontium. The morphological analysis showed that bacterial microcolon ies and biofilms were present on the surface of all implants.