Survival, complications, and patient-reported outcomes of endodontically treated teeth versus dental implant-supported prostheses: A systematic review.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM: Decision making for compromised teeth involving the choice between endodontic treatment and tooth extraction followed by an implant-supported prosthesis is challenging. However, systematic reviews examining studies using the same patients or clinical settings to provide conclusive evidence regarding the best approach are lacking. PURPOSE: The purpose of this systematic review was to compare the survival rate, complications, failure, and patient-reported outcomes of endodontically treated teeth and implant-supported prostheses. MATERIAL AND METHODS: After the protocol had been registered at the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO), PubMed, Scopus, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews were searched from database inception to July 2023 with no language restriction. A manual literature search was performed. The review protocol was based on the population, intervention, comparator, outcome, and study design (PICOS) criteria and included all observational and experimental human studies that directly compared the survival, complications, and patient-reported outcomes of teeth with pulpal and periapical disease after all types of endodontic treatment and subsequent restoration and tooth extraction followed by an implant-supported prosthesis. The risk of bias of the included studies was assessed by using the modified Newcastle-Ottawa scale. RESULTS: Eight observational studies were included in this systematic review: 3 retrospective cohort and 5 case-control studies. Three included studies revealed no difference in survival rate between endodontically treated teeth and implant-supported prostheses during the first 3 years, but the survival of endodontically treated teeth declined over time with a higher failure rate than implant-supported prostheses. In contrast, the other 3 included studies reported lower survival rate for implant-supported prostheses and more complications. In terms of patient-reported outcomes, patients were generally satisfied with both treatment modalities, with notable improvements in oral health-related quality of life in those receiving endodontic treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Whether implant-supported prostheses or endodontically treated teeth are better in terms of survival outcome is unclear. Improved oral health-related quality of life was found after endodontic treatment.