Clinical research of peri‐implant diseases – quality of reporting, case definitions and methods to study incidence, prevalence and risk factors of peri‐implant diseases

AIM: To review the quality of reporting and the methodology of clinical research on the incidence, prevalence and risk factors of peri-implant diseases. METHODS: A MEDLINE search was conducted for cross-sectional, case-control and prospective longitudinal studies reporting on peri-implant diseases. To evaluate the quality of reporting of the selected studies the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) checklist was utilized. RESULTS: The search provided 306 titles and abstracts, out of which 40 were selected for full-text analysis. Finally, 16 studies were included out of which five assessed prevalence and only two the incidence of peri-implant diseases. 13 articles studied risk indicators for peri-implant diseases. None of the scrutinized articles adhered fully to the STROBE criteria. The large majority of articles did not (i) clearly state the applied study design, (ii) describe any effort to address potential sources of bias, (iii) explain how missing data were addressed, (iv) perform any kind of sensitivity analysis, (v) indicate the number of participants with missing data for each variable of interest. CONCLUSION: Collectively, the findings of this review indicate a need for improved reporting of epidemiological studies on peri-implant diseases.