Short dental implants are an alternative to surgical bone augmentation procedures and the placement of longer implants. The high predictability of short implants has encouraged clinicians to load them immediately. However, there are few studies assessing the influence of immediate vs delayed loading of short (< 8 mm) implants. The purpose of this retrospective study was to report the mid-term (5- year) outcomes (survival and marginal bone loss [MBL]) of immediate vs delayed loading of short implants. A total of 44 patients with 149 short implants fulfilled the inclusion criteria (95 and 54 implants with delayed and immediate loading, respectively). During the follow-up period, descriptive clinical variables, implant survival, MBL, and prosthetic complications were recorded and statistically analyzed. The mean follow-up time was 60 ± 40 months. The overall cumulative implant survival was 95.6%, and MBL was –0.1 ± 0.7 mm. No statistically significant differences were detected between the immediate and delayed loading groups in terms of implant survival (92.6% vs 97.5%) or MBL (–0.2 ± 0.8 mm vs –0.1 ± 0.7 mm), respectively. According to the results of this study, the immediate loading of short implants demonstrated predictability at the mid-term followup time. These results must be confirmed in future prospective studies.
