Practitioners Preference and Criteria on Deciding the Surgical Technique of Implant Placement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Flap vs. Flapless Techniques

Introduction: Dental implants placement has become an established treatment modality to replace missing teeth in Saudi Arabia with high success rates. And with the evolution in the surgical techniques; the practitioners and patients are looking for simpler and less traumatic surgical techniques. Methodology: An online questionnaire form was distributed to the practitioners that perform dental implant therapy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was distributed by Google forms using convenience sampling. The encoding of the answers was done using Microsoft Excel and statistical analysis was done using the 22nd version of SPSS. The frequencies of the submitted data were measured using the mode and median for the nominal and ordinal variables respectively and the correlations between the different variables was done using the Chi-square test. Results: 45 practitioners participated in the study. 14 were from the governmental sector and 31 from the private. The specialists were the highest group to participate. Between the flap and flapless techniques; 29 (64.4%) preferred the flap technique over the flapless technique which was preferred by 16 (35.6%). 86.7% perform clinical intraoral measurements and 82.2% request CBCT Scans. The majority of participants 36 (80.1%) felt comfortable performing a flapless technique surgery when the width of the bone at the implant site was 6 mm or more. The top advantage by 15 (33.3%) was that it reduces trauma to the patient. Conclusion: With the choice of the flapless surgical technique; the frequency of requesting CBCTs and surgical guides increases, the practitioners feel confident using the flapless technique for single implant placement and to avoid hemorrhagic tendencies of patients on anti-coagulants, and the main advantage observed by the practitioners is the reduced trauma to the patient, overall the flap surgical technique is still preferred by the practitioners over the flapless technique.