The share of implant treatments in dental claims in Iran

Introduction: Dental malpractice is the failure of a professional person to render appropriate services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, especially when injury or loss follows. Since dental implants have gained a special place in modern dentistry and this new treatment is a costly one, paying more attention to the prevention of malpractice is more important. In this study, we decided to survey the proportion of complaints of dental implant treatments and compare them to the total rate of dental claims in a period of 5 years. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study. Data was collected in Medical Council of Iran during 2006 to 2011 by the means of a checklist inquiring about the date of complaints, main complaint field, gender of doctor and complainant, degree (specialist/general) of the therapist, and the court decision. In regard to ethical issues, the name of dentist and complainants were not mentioned in any document. Data was analyzed using chi-squared test by SPSS. Result: From the total 44 dental claims, 93% were for general practitioners and 86.5% of the accused dentists were male. Moreover, 33 complainants were female. In 57% of cases the court found the dentist guilty. The complaints of male dentist in the field of surgery had the greatest percentage (50%). The second field according to complainant frequency was implants and prosthodontics accounting for 27% of all dental claims. There was only 1 implant complaint submitted about a specialist, and all the others were from general dentists. There was no gender difference regarding dental implant complainants. Conclusion: According to study findings, implants and prosthodontics complaints are in the second rank of dental claims. Therefore, paying greater attention to the training process in universities and continuing training programs is necessary.