Survival and complications of implants to support craniofacial prosthesis: a systematic review

Abstract Objective To assess the survival rate of craniofacial implants (CIs) to support facial prosthesis/epithesis and the prevalence of surgical/biological complications based on previously published studies. Methods An electronic search was undertaken in March/2016. Only studies with a minimum of 5 patients were included. Untransformed proportions of implant failures for different regions were calculated. A meta-analysis evaluated the influence of radiotherapy on the failure rates. A meta-regression was performed considering the follow-up period as covariate. Results Seventy publications included 2355 patients and 8184 CIs (545 failures). The probability of a failure was 5.5% for all CIs (95%CI 4.5-6.5, P