Dental Implants

A dental implant is an artificial tooth root replacement and is used in prosthetic dentistry to support restorations that resemble a tooth or group of teeth. There are several types of dental implants. The most widely accepted and successful implant today is the osseointegrated implant, based on the discovery by Swedish Professor Per-Ingvar Branemark that titanium can be successfully fused into bone when osteoblasts grow on and into the rough surface of the implanted titanium. This forms a structural and functional connection between the living bone and the implant. This discovery has lead to the development of not only single tooth replacement but also implant-supported bridge, or implant-supported denture.

History of Dental Implants

The Mayan civilization has been shown to have used the earliest known examples of endosseous implants (implants embedded into bone), dating back over 1,350 years before Per-Ingvar Brånemark started working with titanium. While excavating Mayan burial sites in Honduras in 1931, archaeologists found a fragment of mandible (lower jaw bone) of Mayan origin, dating from about 600 AD. This mandible, which is considered to be that of a woman in her twenties, had three tooth-shaped pieces of shell placed into the sockets of three missing lower incisor teeth. The first modern day dental implantation was performed in 1965 by Per-Ingvar Branemark of Sweden while working with titanium metal. Branemark found titanium integrated with bone, and coined the term osseointegration. Branemarks first experiments were on the limbs of animals, but later he began to experiment in the mouth which allowed him easier access and observation.

After publishing many articles on osseointergration and dental implants he began to market and develop implants devices for dental application in 1978. It was found that the first dental implants exhibited an unacceptable failure rate. As research continued the dental implant was refined and has developed in to one of the greatest dental prosthetic devices ever created.

Branemark's discovery has led to the establishment of many implant companies and has changed dentistry forever.