Dental implants are used to support crowns, bridges or dentures which are replacing a missing tooth or several missing teeth.
The implants replace the root part of a natural tooth, anchoring in the crown, bridge or denture.
Modern implants are made from titanium and incredibly, it is believed that dental implants were first used over two thousand years ago by the Mayan people.
In order to provide the best stability possible, and therefore increase the success rate of the treatment, the titanium implants are placed directly into the bone of the patient's jaw, just as real teeth roots are.
Work using titanium implants began in the 1960s when Per-Ingvar Branemark discovered, through studies on the bones of live rabbits, that titanium possesses a unique quality of being able to fuse into bone so that it cannot be removed.
This unique quality simply means that titanium makes the most stable dental implants.
In 1965, the first human volunteer successfully received dental implants from per-Ingvar Branemark.
The success rate of implants is dependent upon the stability that is achieved when implants are first placed.
The more stable they are the more likely they are to last a long time.
It is generally understood that the success rate of the surgery is around about 95%.
Almost any patient can receive implants, since they have few contraindications.
Children and teenagers who have yet to finish growing should not receive implants since bone will continue to grow around them, potentially submerging the crown, bridge or denture.
However, there are some conditions which reduce the success rate of the treatment.
Uncontrolled type II diabetes for example leads to poor peripheral blood circulation, delaying healing.