Porous surface of extraoral implants: report of two cases rehabilitated with a new Brazilian extraoral implant

Abstract

Maxillofacial defects caused by cancer treatment are a huge problem, affecting the quality of life of patients. Some of these deformities are minimized using facial epistheses, which needs some additional retenion devices, like glasses or skin adhesives. The use of extraoral fixtures as bone anchorage was introduced many years ago and since then many patients were rehabilitated with better results. Nevertheless, in many cases due to poor bone conditions (i.e. irradiated bone) the success rate of implants are not so good, causing difficulties to rehabilitate the cases. One possible cause of fixture failure could be the poor primary stability achieved in some cases, due to the small dimensions of the fixtures causing a few bone contact with the surface of the implant. Nowadays many researches are being done related to the surface of the fixture, searching for a better primary stability and for a increase of bone contact. Ordinary extraoral implants usually possess a machined surface, until now there is no published report about surface modifications in this kind of implant. This paper presents a new porous surfaced Brazilian extraoral implant (MasterExtraâ, Conexão, Sistema de Próteses, São Paulo, Brazil) that can provide optimal facial rehabilitation due to enhanced bone-to-implant contact and greater long-term stability. Two case reports are described to elucidate its use.