Dental implant therapy in the Brazilian Public System: an overview of the last decade

Aim: This retrospective study aims to describe and analyze the number of dental implants and implant-retained prostheses performed by the Unified Health System (SUS) in the last decade. Methods: This study is based on secondary data from the official government database (DATASUS) performed from January 2010 to December 2019 and is reported following the STROBE. A descriptive analysis was performed of the total sample and the stratified sample divided by Brazilian states. Results: A total of 143,037 dental implants and 93,325 implant-retained prostheses were provided by SUS. It is possible to observe that some states played a massive role on the provision of dental implants and implant-retained prostheses (Parana state: 58.4% and 55.9% and Paraiba state: 21.1% and 25.2% of the total amount of dental implants and implant-retained prostheses, respectively) while some states did not provide a single implant-retained prosthesis. Also, inland cities were mostly responsible for the number of procedures compared to the state capitals. Conclusion: Although dental implant therapy is available in SUS across the country, the number of treatments provided in the last decade is still very limited and is also mainly concentrated in the southeastern region of Brazil.