The aim of this retrospective study was to assess the survival and success rates as well as the incidence of peri‐implantitis in patients with a history of periodontitis who followed an individual maintenance program and supportive periodontal and peri‐implant treatment (SPT), and with 1 to 10 years of implant functional loading.

The results obtained in the present study show that peri‐implantitis begins to appear more frequently after the fifth year of functional loading, with a peak of incidence observed after the seventh year in periodontal compromised patients (Fig. 1). These results confirmed that, for an accurate analysis of peri‐implantitis incidence and prevalence, it is important to plan a study period longer than 5 years of functional loading.

The analysis of the signs of peri‐implantitis in the first 5 years of functional loading showed a similar result, at the implant level, to Ferrigno et al. It was also confirmed by Roccuzzo in his 2012 study, which clearly shows that, in the first 5 years, the difference between healthy patients and periodontal compromised patients was negligible but became notable in the later years of the study period.

A steady decrease in the number of patients at risk and implants at risk was observed over the whole observation period of 10 years. However, when analyzing separately the first and the last 5 years of functional loading, a different rate of decrease was observed in the number of failures and of peri‐implantitis (Table 5).

The difference between the rate of failures observed at the fifth and tenth year was marginal, both at patient and implant level, while the difference between the rate of peri‐implantitis was notable.

The incidence of failures showed a steady increase during the entire observation period, with similar results among patients as among implants.