MatÃas Arroyo-Navarrete & Gabriel M. Fonseca
Summary
Dental malpractice claims have increased in recent years, and implantology is one of the most litigated specialties. Most of these claims have been characterized by having a multifactorial nature, with errors reported in any of their diagnostic, therapeutic or maintenance phases. The purpose of this review was to establish the stage of implant treatment in which the most malpractice claims were made, establishing a categorization of the errors detected and damages associated with each of the phases that includes rehabilitation treatment using dental implants. A review was carried out with a systematic search of the last 10 years in Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science and SciELO databases, complemented with a manual search in specialized journals and in Google Academic, of articles from key words in Spanish, English and Portuguese languages. Only 3 articles were identified that met the selection criteria, which affirms the concept of scant attention given to this eventuality. The claims identified in these reports were analyzed on four types of risk in implantology according to the stage of treatment in which they appear. The surgical stage was identified as the one with the highest risk potential of causing adverse events and associated demands. It is suggested to deepen the specific and generic medico-legal aspects of the specialty, as well as in the development of strategies to prevent adverse events and the associated litigation.
KEY WORDS: Oral implantology, malpractice, health risk, prevention.
How to cite this article
ARROYO-NAVARRETE, M. & FONSECA, G. M. Malpractice claims at different stages of treatment in oral implantology: A review. Int. J. Odontostomat., 15(2):434-442, 2021.