A Short History of Dental Implants

People have been trying to come up with a good way to replace missing teeth since the beginning of time. Thankfully, we live in an era where tooth loss is not the problem it once was. Improved products for caring for our teeth, better understanding of oral health, and regular dental checkups bring us to a time when approximately 70% of adults can expect to enter their later years with all or most of their teeth intact.

Dentures, of course, have long been the standard for those who do manage to lose teeth through accident or disease. In fact, before his midnight ride to alert us that the British were coming, Paul Revere was known for his skills in denture making. He worked very hard to make an improved and more comfortable denture for those who no longer had their own teeth. Obviously, dentures have improved immensely since Paul’s day, but almost any denture wearer will tell you it still isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t preferable to the real thing.

The more permanent method of dental implants has come far, as well… and dental implants, according to those who have them, are as close to the real thing as you can get.

A Timeline of Dental Implant Dentistry

Ancient history – Egyptians shaped seashells and hammered them directly into the gums for the purpose of replacing teeth. Ivory and the bones of animals were also sometimes used to replace missing teeth.
1700s – Lost teeth were often replaced with teeth from human donors. The process was mostly unsuccessful due to immune system reactions to the foreign material.
1800s – Gold, platinum and other metal alloys were used experimentally and placed into sockets where teeth had been freshly extracted in an attempt to create suitable replacements. Long-term success rates were extremely poor.
1952 – A doctor in Sweden accidentally discovered that titanium can bond irreversibly with living bone tissue. (Titanium is the same material that has been successfully used in knee and hip replacements for more than 30 years.)
1965 – The Birth of Modern Implants! The process of purposely implanting titanium in bone for the purpose of rooting prosthetic teeth began.
1981 – The Swedish doctor who made the titanium discovery published a paper covering all the data he had amassed regarding titanium implants.
1982 – The Toronto Conference on Osseointegration in Clinical Dentistry created the first guidelines for what would be considered successful implant dentistry.
2002 – An ADA survey showed that oral and oral and maxillofacial surgeons, periodontists, and general dentists near doubled the number of implants performed per dentist between 1995 and 2002.
Today - You can be among the many patients that will benefit from implant dentistry in the coming year and beyond.

A preferred method of tooth replacement.

Since the 1980s, dental implants have been catching on as the preferred method of tooth replacement. It is estimated that more than 800,000 patients have benefited from dental implant techniques since 1965. Since titanium is not treated as a foreign object by the body, the integration of titanium screws in jaw bone has become standard dental treatment. The benefit, of course, is that by securing a prosthesis tooth to a metal rod that is firmly imbedded in—or in fact is part of—the jaw bone, you are creating a solid replacement that looks, feels and acts just like the real thing.

Consider the implications.

With dentures, for instance, a patient can expect to have approximately 20% of the chewing force he or she had with real teeth in place. The dental implant, however, provides up to 95% of the chewing force of real teeth.

Dental implants require the same care and treatment as natural teeth. A patient need not remove the false teeth to clean them. No more messing with expensive polishers and bleaching agents to obtain those pearly whites.

As well, with implants you aren’t faced with the continual struggle to keep your replacement teeth in place. No adhesives necessary, your new tooth is there just the same as the old one… only expected to last for your lifetime!