Medicolegal aspects of oral implant surgery.

The number of practitioners performing implant surgery has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years. As confidence is gained they tend to accept increasingly challenging cases and it is to be expected that the incidence of problems and complications will increase. Serious problems and complications may result from inadequate treatment planning, some from careless instrumentation, and some from lack of appropriate precautions. Many have resulted in medicolegal actions and it seems prudent to study these in the hope that awareness of these disasters may prevent their repetition.