We tend to think of dental implants as a modern miracle and in their current form they are. Yet the history of dental implants, or rather their origins, go back several thousand years.
Ancient attempts
Some 4000 years ago the ancient Chinese were known to make use of bamboo pegs to fill spaces left by missing teeth, while mummified remains of an Egyptian king who lived some 3000 years ago revealed there was a copper peg inserted into his jaw bone. This is probably the first recorded instance of a metal replacement tooth.
Metal dental implants were the flavour of the day in ancient France too as a cadaver was discovered in a Celtic grave thought to be around 2300 years old. This time, the skull was found to contain an iron tooth amongst remaining natural teeth. It was believed, however, that in this instance the primitive ‘dental implant’ was inserted sometime after death rather than during life.
Around 600 AD, metal and bamboo made way for seashells as a discovery was made back in 1931 of an ancient Mayan woman thought to be in her twenties. In her mandible were three solid tooth-shaped implants made from seashell.
At first, it was thought that the shell was inserted after death (post mortem). However, in 1970 a curious dental academic carried out some further investigation and it was discovered that bone tissue had grown around the implanted seashells, so they were very much in use when the woman was alive.
18th century
The history of dental implants didn’t really change much and civilisations continued to experiment with different materials as replacements for missing teeth. However, it wasn’t until the 18th century when the father of dentistry Pierre Fauchard started to experiment with dental prosthetics. Even then, it was known that for a dental implant to be successful it must be able to fuse naturally with bone. So he started to experiment with a wide array of materials including animal teeth, gold, and other alloys such as platinum – each yielding poor results.
It would take some time before proper alloys were identified that were both safe for dental implants and wouldn’t cause bodily rejection.
20th century
Some 200 years later even though the world had moved on, the history of dental implants at this point had not. In the early 1900s Dr EJ Greenfield started to experiment with an iridium-platinum implant attached to a gold crown. The process did show some evidence of osseointegration (bone fusion process) and surprisingly, implanted teeth were known to last for several years. However, bodily rejection was still commonplace.
In the 1930s and 40s, dentists started to experiment with titanium for the first time in the form of orthopaedic screws. These were made to hold false teeth in place. Whilst rejection was less of a problem and bone growth prevailed, the clumsy design meant that it was back to the drawing board for dental implants.
Per Ingvar Branemark
Some years later in 1952, a young orthopaedic surgeon by the name of Per Ingvar Branemark was researching bone healing. He had placed a titanium cylinder into the leg of a rabbit to act as a splint. Sometime later he came to remove it and realised that he couldn’t because the bone has completely fused to it.
He continued to carry out further studies on the properties of titanium and by the end of the 1950s, the first titanium dental implant has been inserted into the jaw of an animal.
It wasn’t until 1965 some 13 years after Branemark accidentally discovered osseointegration that the very first dental implants were placed into a live human patient. That patient had suffered from jaw problems all his life which had caused his teeth to fail. The dental implant process took a full six months to properly integrate with the bone tissue but once in place, the dental implants were astonishingly still going strong right up until the patient’s death some 40 years’ later.
Modern dental implants (as we know them) were effectively born.
1978
For the next 13 years, Branemark performed further experiments and published studies and eventually in 1978 when sufficient clinical testing had been gathered, he finally commercialised the very first dental implant system.
Modern dental implants
Since Dr Branemark’s discovery, the history of dental implants has moved on at a rapid pace and many further innovations have occurred.
New dental implant shapes have been used, for example, to ensure greater stability in the mouth, while new oral surgery techniques have also been developed to assist with safer and better placement. Various surfaces have also been adapted to modern dental implants to aid the bone fusion process and clinical experts are pioneering new forms of nanotechnology to make the osseointegration process faster and less of a risk.
To date, millions of dental implant patients and hundreds of dental implant companies have all benefitted from Branemark’s initial patient and thanks to his dedication and work we now have a reliable form of missing tooth replacement that is as close to our natural teeth as it can possibly be.
It’s hard to believe that modern dental implants in their current form have only been around for a little over 40 years but given that the history of dental implants was thousands of years in the making, it’s no wonder that they remain the gold standard of missing tooth replacement.
If you would like to know more about the dental implant process or are considering dental implants to replace missing teeth, then come and talk to the team at No Gaps Dental at (02) 8806 0227. We’re a multi-location dental group with 15 convenient locations situated in and around the Sydney Metropolitan area. So book a consultation at a clinic of your choice today and let us show you how we can help you restore your smile.
Note: Any surgical or invasive procedure carries risks.