To replace lost teeth with an abutment anchored to the bone it is not a new concept.
Archeological discoveries showed that ancient Egyptians and south America civilizations, already experienced with re-implantation of lost teeth with ivory or hand carved wood replacements.
In the XVIIIth century lost teeth were sometimes replaced with extracted teeth from other human donors. The implantation process was rudimentary and success ranks were extremely low due to strong immune reaction of the receiving individual.
In 1809, Maggilio made a gold implant placed immediately after extraction. Later other researchers tried the same procedure with platinum posts, others with a platinum disc and a porcelain crown and they kept on experiencing with different metallic alloys and porcelain formulas.
The first implant was in some way, successful, it was the one placed by Strock in 1937, from Harvard University, made of a cobalt alloy-chromium-molybdenum (vitallium), implanted after the extraction without post surgical complications, tested as well as on animals and humans.
Modern history developments
In the interval of half 30s to the present, it keeps on developing dental implant concepts, creating therefore the variety of different implant kinds nowadays. These modalities include subperiostical implants, blade shape implants, mandibular branch and endosseous root shape implants.
These will be described in the implant types section.
The great leap in Oral Implantology was obtained in 1952 in the laboratory of vital microscopy of Lund University, Sweden, by a Sweden team lead by Dr. Ingvar Branemark, orthopedic surgeon. One of his research projects were to study the microscopically processes of bone healing experienced on rabbits. He started designing a titanium cylinder and he placed it in a rabbit femur bone, he observed that some months later, the cylinder had merged to the bone; to this phenomenon he called Osseointegration. Later he used titanium screws as osseous anchors for lost teeth.
The concept of osseointegration evolved so closed with cylindrical titanium screws design with an specific treatment on their surface to gain its bioacceptation.
Since then, new dental implants methods have arisen, most of them very similar to the original titanium screw designed by Dr Branemark. In addition many companies continue researching and improving implants.
