FEA in Dentistry: A Useful Tool to Investigate the Biomechanical Behavior of Implant Supported Prosthesis

The use of dental implants is widespread and has been successfully applied to replace missing teeth (Amoroso et al., 2006). Although high success rate has been reported by several clinical studies, early or late dental implants failures are still inevitable. During mastication, overstress around dental implants may cause bone resorption, which leads to infection on the peri-implant region and failure of oral rehabilitation (Kopp, 1990). The way in which bone is loaded may influence its response (Koca et al., 2005). The results of cyclic loading into the bone differ from those of static loading (Papavasiliou et al., 1996). In case of repetitive cyclic load application, stress microfractures in bone may occur (Koca et al., 2005) and may induce osteoclastic activity to remove the damaged bone (Papavasiliou et al., 1996). So far, it is imperative to understand where the maximum stresses occur during mastication around the implants in order to avoid these complications (Nagasao et al., 2003).