ABSTRACT
In our experience, the majority of patients have little or no postoperative swelling/bruising/pain. The success of osseointegration is dependent on minimal mechanical and thermal trauma to the bone, and therefore the patient should not experience pain in the bone sites. Severe pain would suggest poor technique and may coincide with early failure of the implant. A more controversial topic is whether pre-and postoperative antibiotics are required to prevent infection and subsequent failure of the implant. It was once routine to prescribe antibiotics. However, as the surgery is carried out under good surgical conditions and a sterile implant is delivered carefully into the prepared site, the chance of infection should be low. Recent systematic reviews have suggested minimal differences in implant success rates with and without antibiotic cover. It would be prudent to use antibiotics if
l there has been a recent infection at the site; l augmentation and grafting is performed; l the patient has a medical history that suggests a suscep-
tibility to infection; l the patient has hard bone (type 1) that has been difficult to
cut and cool.
