Although dental implant-supported crowns offer aesthetic, functional and natural-feeling tooth replacements, and the market is estimated to reach $6.8 billion by 2024, the emerging endemic of peri-implantitis has severely compromised the long-term success of implant dentistry.
Roughly one-quarter of dental implant patients are threatened by peri-implantitis, a destructive inflammatory process that infects the tissue and bone around dental implants. It can lead to progressive bone loss, bleeding, pus and eventual loss of the dental implants and associated crowns or dentures that they support. Replacement of a new dental implant at the previously damaged site is often challenging because of poor bone quality and delayed healing.
