Figure 3 illustrates a forest plot showing no significant differences in implant survival between MS and RS groups in all included studies [36,37,38,39,40,41]. The implant mean marginal bone loss in the remaining group of six included studies containing 1342 implants ranged from 0.33 to 3.77 mm, with a minimum and maximum of − 0.74 and 5.20 mm, respectively [36,37,38,39,40,41]. The forest plot in Fig. 4 demonstrates no significant differences in implant mean marginal bone loss between MS and RS groups in all included studies [36,37,38,39,40,41]. One study (Matarasso et al.) did not report on bleeding on probing (BoP), whereas four studies reported BoP varying from 5.0 to 69.0% (Aglietta et al., Sayardoust et al., Wennström et al., Nicu et al., and Gallego et al.) [36,37,38,39,40,41]. Meta-analysis was in addition separately performed on the two included RCTs [38.40]. Figure 5 illustrates a forest plot showing no significant differences (P > .05) in implant survival between MS and RS groups in both studies [38, 40]. Figure 6 shows no significant differences (P > .05) in implant mean marginal bone loss between MS and RS groups in both RCTs [38, 40]. A limitation of the performed meta-analysis is that the merge of periodontally compromised smokers and non-smokers could not be avoided.