Background and Objectives: Peri-implantitis is a common finding among patients with dental implants. There is no consensus regarding the treatment of this disease, but in many cases, surgical treatment is common practice. A histopathological analysis is not an integral part of suggested protocols. The present study investigated the clinical and histopathological parameters of lesions mimicking peri-implantitis and correlated them with the outcome and follow-up data. Materials and Methods: The study included 65 consecutive biopsies taken from peri-implantitis patients between 2008-2019. Results: The three common diagnoses were fibro-epithelial hyperplasia 20 (30.7%), pyogenic granuloma 16 (24.6%), and peripheral giant cell granuloma 15 (23%). There were 18 cases of recurrent lesions in the study group (27.7%). The recurrence rate was the highest in peripheral giant cell granuloma (8, 12.3%), versus 6% in pyogenic granuloma and fibro-epithelial hyperplasia. These differences in the recurrence rate were statistically significant (p = 0.014). Conclusions: This study emphasizes the necessity of submitting tissue of peri-implantitis cases for histopathological analysis since the more locally aggressive lesions (peripheral giant cell granuloma and pyogenic granuloma), which comprise nearly half of the cases in this study, do not differ in clinical or radiographic characteristics from other peri-implant lesions.
Keywords: giant cell granuloma; histology; pathology; peri-implantitis; pyogenic granuloma.