RESEARCH ARTICLE
Measuring the Monetary Value of Dental Implants for Denture Retention: A Willingness to Pay Approach
Pedram Sendi1, 2, *, Nadine Bertschinger2, Christina Brand2, Carlo P. Marinello2, Heiner C. Bucher1, Michael M. Bornstein3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 11
First Page: 498
Last Page: 502
Publisher ID: TODENTJ-11-498
DOI: 10.2174/1874210601711010498
Article History:
Received Date: 08/04/2017Revision Received Date: 16/06/2017
Acceptance Date: 15/08/2017
Electronic publication date: 14/09/2017
Collection year: 2017

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Purpose:
Two interforaminal dental implants in is a common treatment option for denture retention in edentulous patients. Economic methods to assess the patient’s quality of life include the willingness to pay (WTP) for implant treatment and willingness to accept (WTA) to forgo implant treatment. The purpose of this study was to assess the monetary value of implant retained complete dentures using WTP and WTA.
Methods:
We included a convenience sample of 16 patients from a previously published cohort study on the survival of immediately loaded implants in edentulous patients to assess WTP and WTA for this treatment option.
Results:
The average maximum WTP for implant treatment was 4606 (95% CI: 2991-6222) Swiss Francs. Out of the 16 patients, only 5 were willing to trade their implants for money, with a mean WTA of CHF 33'500 (range: 3000-100'000).All patients would agree to undergo the implant surgery procedure again.
Conclusion:
The results of the present study show that most patients are not willing to trade the increase in quality of life after implant surgery against money, suggesting that WTA exceeds by large WTP for the same health condition.