Background:Masticatory forces cause fatigue to the dental luting agents, adversely affecting the retention of these cement-retained crowns. Sandblasting (SB) and diamond abrading the abutment surface improves the bond strength of luting agents. However, the effect of acid etching (AE) on the implant abutment surface and the effect of other surface modifications under masticatory load are yet to be documented.Purpose:The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of abutment surface modifications on the retention of cement-retained restorations subjected to cyclic fatigue loads.Materials and Methods:Forty Ni-Cr copings were made on Cp-titanium laboratory analogs. The specimens were divided into two groups as Group I: Uniaxial tensile loading (UTL) and Group II: Offaxial cyclic loading followed by uniaxial tensile loading [CTL]. Further subgrouped as, subgroup I: Control (C), subgroup II: SB, subgroup III: AE, and subgroup IV: SB + AE. The copings were luted with Zn2(PO4)3 and subjected to uniaxial tensile loading. Copings were recemented, and CTL was conducted. Two-way analysis of variance was used as the statistical test of significance.Results:In relation to the subgroups, the bond strength of Zn2(PO4)3 was higher in Group I than in Group II. The bond strength in subgroup IV was superior in both Group I and Group II (547.170 N ± 5.752 and 531.975 N ± 6.221 respectively).Conclusions:For both UTL and CTL, abutment SB + AE elicited maximum coping retention followed by AE. Off-axial cyclic loading adversely affected the retention irrespective of the surface modifications.

A severely atrophied maxilla presents serious limitations for conventional implant placement. This presents challenge to the surgeon for implant placement in harmony with the planned prosthesis. Survey of various literatures using internet sources, manual searches, and common textbooks on dental implants shows, that a thorough knowledge of conventional augmentation procedures such as bone augmentation techniques, guided bone regeneration, alveolar distraction, maxillary sinus elevation techniques with or without grafting and contemporary techniques of implant placement provide effective long-term solutions in the management of the atrophic maxilla.

Background: Methyl methacrylate monomer of denture base resins was modified with several monomers to achieve better physico-mechanical properties without compromising the biocompatibility. However, there are no consensuses on the best strategy to achieve best modified monomer. Purpose: To identify and evaluate the differences in the properties between conventional and modified monomers and to verify the influence of several variables on the properties of denture base acrylic resin. Materials and Methods: This study was executed by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. In-vitro studies that investigated the properties of conventional and modified monomers were selected. Searches were carried out in the Ebscohost, PubMed, Semantic scholar and J-stage databases. The search commenced from the year 1995 and the last search was done till November 2018. A comparison was performed between modified and unmodified monomers. The analyses were carried out using fixed-effect models. Results: The meta-analysis results showed high heterogeneity in all aspects, and higher flexural strength for monomers modified with 20% methacrylic acid. Conclusion: Although the articles included in this meta-analysis showed high heterogeneity and high risk of bias, the in-vitro literature seems to suggest that use of modified monomers could improve the properties of denture base resins. Other variants of monomer modifications and their tested parameters were discussed in this systematic review as well. Dimensional accuracy is an unexplored variable to be evaluated extensively in the future researches.