Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a complex, systemic pathology which mainly affects the metabolism of carbohydrates and which has consequences on the whole organism and on the patient’s quality of life.
Implantology and patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus
Type 2 diabetes develops from the age of forty and mainly affects people who are obese or overweight. In type 2 diabetes mellitus, the pancreas produces insulin in a reduced way, but the body’s cells are unable to use it efficiently.
This leads to an increase in blood glucose levels. Diagnosis for type 2 diabetes may not be immediate, hyperglycemia develops gradually and does not involve particularly obvious symptoms such as those present in type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes affects dental treatments due to the effects that the disease has on blood clotting and osseointegration. In recent years, however, for controlled and treated patients, diabetes has ceased to be a contraindication for some dental therapies or at least, with due care, even diabetic patients have been able to face complex interventions such as implantology.
For patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, however, the insertion of dental implants continues to be a complicated operation and subject to particular evaluations by the dentist, even in cases of patients with controlled diabetes.
Dental implants in patients with type 2 diabetes
In a research published in the Journal of Investigative and Clinical Dentistry of November 2019 some dentists have evaluated some conditions related to the insertion of dental implants on patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus:
- bleeding on probing;
- pocket depth;
- marginal bone loss.
These parameters were evaluated on dental implants placed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and in healthy patients.
To this data was further added other information processed through a search of the world literature through the portals PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane, Embase and ScienceDirect. The research included clinical trials that analyzed the success of dental implants in patients with adequately compensated type 2 diabetes mellitus.
The results of the research
From the in-depth analysis of the clinical cases included in the study, it emerged that between patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and healthy patients to whom dental implants have been inserted through implantology there are statistically significant differences on all the parameters taken into consideration.
Patients with type 2 diabetes, even if adequately compensated by pharmacological therapies, are much more likely to develop peri-implantitis, which is why before undergoing an implant surgery it is advisable to undergo a careful evaluation by the dentist.
