Reuse of healing abutments: Ethical, biological and professional training implications.

Background: The aim was to estimate the prevalence of reuse of healing abutments, the methods used in disinfection and to analyze the reasons that lead to the reuse of these components by professionals who work in rehabilitation with dental implants. Material and Methods: For this, an online data collection was carried out through a questionnaire developed in Google Forms. This questionnaire was applied to 284 specialists in implantology, randomized, of the 1,147 registered in the Regional Council of Dentistry of Rio Grande do Sul. The questionnaire was divided into three parts: the first containing the Free and Informed Consent Form; the second referring to the correspondents' demographic data; and the third part with information on reuse, disinfection and sterilization routines used, risk perception and information from manufacturers. To estimate the prevalence in the reuse of healing abutments by implantologists, the frequency of responses was used. Results: The results showed that almost all implantologists reuse healing abutments (98.1%). The main reasons for reuse were cost (71.2%) and practicality (26%). Regarding the limitations, 53.3% do not see limitations in its reuse, 20% associate it with increased roughness, 17.8% with the accumulation of organic matter and 8.9% with cross-infection as limitations for reuse. Already 95.3% did not receive any guidance from manufacturers on the reuse of these components. Enzymatic detergent and ultrasonic bath was the most used cleaning method (50.7%) followed by ultrasonic bath (23.3%). Autoclave was the method used for sterilization for all respondents. Conclusions: The reuse of healing abutments is a practice adopted by implantologists in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and most professionals do not observe limitations in this practice since these components are used repeatedly. Decontamination with enzymatic detergent and an ultrasonic bath is the most commonly used procedure associated with autoclave sterilization. Key words:Abutment, reuse, decontamination, sterilization.