How Implants Work

Since the Egyptian times man has tried to implant false teeth into our jaws when natural teeth have been lost. This came to a head in the 1960's when numerous systems were being tried and dental implants received a very bad press as they had a 90% failure rate. The change came when in 1952 Professor P.I.Branemark of Gothenburg Sweden discovered that a piece of titanium placed into a rabbits leg, to allow him to view how blood flowed through the bone, became fused to the bone and could not be removed. He termed this process Osseointegration. In 1965 the first of this new type of dental implant, called root form implants, because they are shaped and act like the normal root of a tooth, were placed in a human. The results of his work were not published till 1981, when he had sufficient long term data, to be sure that the process worked.

Dental implants are metallic cylinders, made of titanium though sometimes with different coatings on them, that are surgically placed into the jaw bone where original teeth once existed. These root like cylinders are used to secure a replacement tooth in placed when a tooth or teeth are missing. The implant acts as a false root which then allows a crown or bridge to be placed on top of the implant just as if it were a natural remaining root or tooth. The use of dental implants to replace a missing tooth or teeth, unlike conventional bridgework, does not involve the removal of large amounts of tooth tissue from the adjacent teeth and thus weakening these teeth in the process. Because adjacent teeth are not involved the use of dental implants also avoids the additional stresses that would otherwise have to be placed on the adjoining teeth and can, in fact, improve their long term prognosis.