While it remains fresh in my mind may be the best reason why I must blog this particular portion in. At the ITI meeting in Kuching/Malaysia on Thursday May 24th 2012, I was listening to Dr Chatchai Kunavisanut from Thailand speaking on the topic, "Reduced diameter implant: A solution for a narrow ridge", and then giving his opinion on it. He duly showed a case where the lower anterior ridge was very narrow, and he placed two minis to replace two incisors in an "experiment"!?!!  It was a clear contradiction against his own advice not to use minis. On his final slide, he showed pictures of two mini implant cases in which he casually pointed out that they are bound to fail. The conclusion then was, "do not use mini dental implants!".

One look at the two pics and I immediately recognized them to be from my blogspot: smalldentalimplants.blogspot.com.  When it came to discussion on what had been shown, I stood up and readily confessed that those were my cases, one on the upper right and one showing the lower left molars built on mini dental implants. I duly informed the speaker and the audience that contrary to them failing, they were still in my patients' mouths when I last saw them barely a few months ago and after at least 3 years after the minis were placed!!! After checking my blog:

http://smalldentalimplants.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post.html

http://smalldentalimplants.blogspot.com/2010/08/bone-climbing-up-mini-dental-implant.html,

I must correct myself, it was the lower right molar, not the lower left.


The mistake that I made was that I went on and on elaborating on why we should not judge minis prematurely and that all serious implant dentists should treatment plan with both minis and conventionals in mind...... and so on.  I should have just set down and let the dear doctor defend what he just said. It was already the end of the meeting and the moderator was pointing at his watch. When I sat down, Dr. Stephen Chen from Australia insisted on replying to what I said. He said that treatment should be evidence based and not anecdoctal and basically challenged me for the studies that can support the wider use of minis and if so proven, he will be one of the first to start using them! In addition, they will even give me a slot in Bangkok to speak at the ITI Congress South East Asia in Bangkok Thailand in May 16-17 2013. I immediately took up the challenge and said that I will get the retrospective study from my own practice and also from the practices of some of my colleagues in Malaysia. Yap, a multi-centre retrospective study! Challenge thrown, challenge taken and the study is going to be ready. Check out the link below as well to read the debate over narrow diameters with an initial query from Carl Misch himself and a final closing comment from yours truly here.

http://www.osseonews.com/narrow-diameter-implants-are-there-absolute-contraindications/