Our team has been successfully placing dental implants for our patients here in San Diego for years upon years. However, dental implants have been around for much longer than that.
Human skulls from around 600 A.D. show that our ancestors used to try to place carved shells, jade, and stones into the mandible to replace teeth. Fast forward all the way to the 1800s and the first dental implants hit the market, albeit with a very poor and unpredictable success rate.
In 1949, Drs. Goldberg and Gershkoff created an implant that was not implanted directly into the bone. However, this type of implant offered a 10-year success rate of 60% and a 15-year success rate of 50%, much lower than what we experience today.
In 1952, Per-Ingvar Brånemark stumbled upon the process that we now know as “osseointegration,” the foundation of modern dental implant treatments. While studying regeneration in rats, he noticed that he simply couldn’t remove a titanium chamber from the rabbit’s bone, because the titanium had fused to the bone’s surface.
While this discovery was dramatic and changed the course of dental treatments for decades, it was a tough sell for dentists and doctors at the time. They didn’t believe that inserting titanium into living tissue could be healthy for patients. To make sure that titanium would not be rejected by the body, Dr. Branemark enlisted about 20 students working in his lab to have titanium instruments inserted into their upper arms.
However, it wasn’t until a professional conference in 1982 that Dr. Branemark finally won widespread support for his treatment option, and dental implants became a widespread treatment plan for thousands of patients with missing teeth.
Today, our dental implant success rate is high, patient satisfaction has soared, and it’s a treatment that we love to offer our valuable patients here in our office.
If you have any lingering questions about dental implants or if you would like to schedule a free consultation, please contact our team or make an appointment. Our incredible staff will give you the best dental care possible.