At present, dental implants are the best treatment for tooth replacement, and the basic necessity of successful implant therapy is an appropriate implant position. Computer-aided implant surgery (CAIS) becomes a standard approach for the implant installation process; nevertheless, current research is still not consistent on the effect of the surgeon’s skill and the accuracy of the implant position. The purpose of this study was to analyze the accuracy of the implant position placed by experienced and inexperienced surgeons.

Six experienced and six inexperienced operators had participated in this study. One operator placed one implant on the right central incisor on the model using a computer-guided template that had been planned with implant planning software (3Shape Implant Studio® program). After the implant installation process was completed, all models were scanned and the placed implant position was determined. The amount of coronal, horizontal, vertical, and angular deviations of planned and placed implant positions were calculated and compared between experienced and inexperienced groups using the independent t-test.

For the inexperienced group, the mean errors of coronal, horizontal, depth, and angular deviations were 0.60 ± 0.21 mm, 0.33 ± 0.12 mm, -0.52 ± 0.19 mm, and 1.71 ± 0.29 degrees, respectively. For the experienced group, the mean errors of coronal, horizontal, depth, and angular deviations were 0.66 ± 0.19 mm, 0.22 ± 0.09 mm, -0.67 ± 0.13 mm, and 1.69 ± 0.20 degrees, respectively. The analysis showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups for all parameters. Nonetheless, these experimental results should be carefully applied to clinical reference because some limitations of this study were that it was an in vitro study and performed only a single implant by a limited number of participants.

To summarize, the operator’s experience had no effect on the accuracy of single implant position performed under computer-guided implant surgery protocol.