ABSTRACT
The history of tooth replacement goes back to ancient civilization. The earliest attempts at tooth replacement with dental implants were in the Mayan civilization dating back to 600 ad. Ancient skulls have been discovered in which teeth were replaced by materials ranging from carved stones, bamboo sticks and ivory, to fragments of seashells. It was not until the work of Professor Branemark in Sweden in the early 1950s, that biocompatibility of dental implants in experimental studies in animals was demonstrated. The depth of the scientific research, specifically in titanium implants, was the work of the group led by Per-Ingvar Branemark an orthopaedic surgeon. His work defined osseointegration. Osseointegration was originally defined as a direct structural and functional connection between ordered living bone and the surface of a load-carrying implant. It is now said that an implant is regarded as osseointegrated when there is no progressive relative movement between the implant and the bone with which it has direct contact. In practice, this means that in osseointegration there is an anchorage mechanism whereby non-vital components can be reliably and predictably incorporated into living bone and that this anchorage can persist under all normal conditions of loading. This definition of osseointe- gration has formed the basis for today’s implantology science.
