Introduction: Osseointegration are often suffering from oral conditions, especially, the micro gap at the implant-abutment connection represents a site for bacterial plaque aggregation, leading to increased inflammatory cells and causing peri-implantitis.
Aim: The aim of this narrative review was to describe the different kinds of implant-abutment connections and their ability to reduce bacterial leakage and thus prevent peri-implantitis.
Materials and methods: The following databases were consulted: Pubmed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and Research gate and a total of 528 articles were found. After reading the abstract and titles, 473 items were excluded. The remaining articles (n = 55) were assessed for full-text eligibility. Thirty-three studies were included in the review.
Results and conclusions: We selected 22 clinical trials and 11 reviews, examining a total sample of 2110 implants. From the review, it was clear that there exists a relationship between the implant-abutment interface and bacterial leakage. All the connections presented an amount of micro-gap and bacterial micro-leakage, though conical and mixed connection systems seemed to behave better. Moreover, both connections seemed to have a better load distribution and the mixed system also had anti-rotational properties which are very useful during the positioning of the prosthesis.
Keywords: dental abutments; dental implant-abutment design; dental implantation; dental implants; immediate dental implant loading; peri-implantitis; periodontics.