Awareness and needs of dental implants by patients in New South Wales.

An exploratory cross-sectional analytical study of patients presenting for prosthodontic treatment to private general dental practices and public hospitals in New South Wales was completed. Significantly more patients attending private dentists had 'heard' of dental implants compared with the hospital group (G2=79.404; df=1; p<0.001) and significantly more of the former patients were aware that dental implant treatment is available in New South Wales (G2=32.823; df=1; p<0.001). Of the patients attending private practice 19.2% felt that it is likely that they may require dental implant treatment in the future and 14.1% of their current treatment requests involved implants. These figures may be considered moderately high whereas the corresponding figures for the patients attending public hospitals were low.