Early Laser‐Welded Titanium Frameworks Supported by Implants in the Edentulous Mandible: A 15‐Year Comparative Follow‐Up Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Comparative long-term knowledge of different framework materials in the edentulous implant patient is not available for 15 years of follow-up. PURPOSE: To report and compare a 15-year retrospective data on implant-supported prostheses in the edentulous mandible provided with laser-welded titanium frameworks (test) and gold alloy frameworks (control). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Altogether, 155 patients were consecutively treated with abutment-level prostheses with two early generations of fixed laser-welded titanium frameworks (titanium group). Fifty-three selected patients with gold alloy castings formed the control group. Clinical and radiographic 15-year data were collected and compared for the groups. RESULTS: All patients who were followed up for 15 years (n = 72) still had a fixed prosthesis in the mandible at the termination of the study. The 15-year original prosthesis cumulative survival rate (CSR) was 89.2 and 100% for titanium and control frameworks (p = .057), respectively (overall CSR 91.7%). The overall 15-year implant CSR was 98.7%. The average 15-year bone loss was 0.59 mm (SD 0.56) and 0.98 mm (SD 0.64) for the test and control groups (p = .027), respectively. Few (1.3%) implants had >3.1-mm accumulated bone loss after 15 years. The most common complications for titanium frameworks were resin or veneer fractures and soft tissue inflammation. Fractures of the titanium metal frame were observed in 15.5% of the patients. More patients had framework fractures in the earliest titanium group (Ti-1 group) compared to the gold alloy group (p = .034). Loose and fractured implant screw components were few (2.4%). CONCLUSION: Predictable overall long-term results could be maintained with the present treatment modality. Fractures of the metal frames and remade prostheses were more common in the test group, and the gold alloy frameworks had a tendency to work better when compared with welded titanium frameworks during 15 years. However, on the average, more bone loss was observed for implants supporting gold alloy frameworks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".