Background: Risk factors associated with periimplant disease have been exhaustively explored in many studies. However, despite the high incidence of smokers in the general population, it is still unclear whether smoking is a risk factor for the development of periimplant diseases.
Purpose: The aim of this review was to analyze all pertinent literature, including systematic reviews, clinical trials, and long-term follow-up, to evaluate smoking as a real risk factor for periimplant diseases.
Material and methods: A comprehensive search was conducted on MEDLINE through PubMed database of the US National Library of Medicine, for articles published until March 2018. All searches were performed using medical subject headings or free-text words. After screening, data extraction, and duplicate removal from 972 found articles, 19 were included in this review.
Results: The influence of smoking on the healing process around implants has been explored for potential disruption of the healing process and periimplant disease development. Despite the discussed results in many studies, most of the analyzed literature shows a scientific basis to determine smoking as a risk factor for periimplant disease development, considering that smoking increases the susceptibility to periimplant disease. However, future studies excluding confounding factors need to be performed.
Conclusion: This review showed that smoking is a real risk factor that increases the likelihood of development of periimplant disease.