A Brief History of Dental Implants
Dental implants have come a long way since our ancient ancestors first conceived of the idea.
If you are missing one or more teeth, dental implants offer the best possible solution. Not only will a dental implant restore the natural beauty of your smile and enable you to chew properly; implants can also improve your overall oral health.
How?
When a titanium implant peg is placed in the jaw, the bone is actually stimulated to bond with the peg in a process called osseointegration. The end result is a stronger jaw which will help support the remaining natural teeth that you have.
Of course, this is only possible with modern dental implant technology. We are quite lucky to live in an era when quality dental implants are widely available. Our ancestors were not so lucky, but this did not stop some of them from trying whatever means they could think of for replacing missing teeth.
Timeline of Dental Implant Technologies
2000 BC: Carved bamboo pegs were used to replace teeth in ancient China.
1000 BC: Ancient Egyptians apparently thought it important for pharaohs to be prepared to enter the afterlife with a complete smile. One mummy has been discovered with a copper replacement tooth hammered into his upper jaw bone.
200 AD: Another case of a posthumous dental implant comes from a Celtic burial site in France. A body was found with an iron tooth hammered into the jaw.
600 AD: The first dental implants placed during life and intended to be used as a permanent solution to missing teeth come from the Mayan culture. In 1931, a pair of archeologists excavating ruins in Honduras discovered a skull with three primitive dental implants made from shells in the lower jaw. The shells had been carved and shaped to fit into the person’s smile, and what is truly amazing is that the bone structure around these shell implants showed signs of regeneration indicating that the procedure had some degree of success.
1800s: Doctors and researchers began experimenting with placing implants made of gold, platinum, and other alloys, but their efforts did not have good long-term results because the body rejected the implant as a foreign object rather than bonding with it.
1960s: A researcher studying bone healing and integration discovered the unique properties of titanium while experimenting on rabbits. In 1965 he placed the first titanium dental implant in a human patient.
Since this time many advances in dental implants have been made, including the introduction of roughened titanium pegs to further facilitate osseointegration.
