Dental Implant

A small post, usually made of titanium or a titanium alloy, surgically placed into the jawbone to serve as an artificial tooth root, onto which a dentist later attaches a replacement crown, bridge, or denture. The device relies on osseointegration, the direct structural bonding of living bone to the implant's surface, a phenomenon first studied systematically by the Swedish researcher Per-Ingvar Branemark, who observed while studying bone healing in the 1950s and 1960s that titanium placed in bone could fuse to it so tightly that it could not be removed without damaging the bone, and who went on to apply the finding to dental replacement starting in the late 1960s. Once the implant has fused with the jawbone over a period of weeks to months, it functions as a stable anchor that can support a single replacement tooth or, with several implants placed together, an entire arch of teeth, without needing to rely on or reshape neighboring natural teeth as a conventional bridge does. Refinements in implant surface texture, shape, and surgical technique since Branemark's original work have steadily shortened healing time and improved long-term success rates, making the implant a standard option for replacing missing teeth wherever the jawbone is healthy enough to support one.