Strengths and Limitations
This study is the first prospective trial comparing the clinical outcomes between a wide-diameter implant and a previous-generation small-diameter implant at long-term (10-year) follow-up. In addition, it is the first prospective trial that compares the 10-year results between loading of a BAHI 3 weeks after surgery with those 6 weeks after surgery. The original controlled and partially randomized trials with multiple participating centers provided strong evidence for high implant stability, implant survival, and good soft tissue outcomes until 5 years of follow-up. With the additional long-term follow-up in a prospective manner and original setup, we confirmed these excellent outcomes for the test implant, even when it was loaded 3 weeks after surgery.Because of its combined nature, there are limitations to this study that are worth mentioning. One limitation is that not all follow-up visits were synchronous with each other. This unsynchronized visit concerned only a slight difference in time (1 week) and the absence of one follow-up visit (8 weeks). Furthermore, as already described in the 5-year study (