Posted by : Elaine Hanford in (Dental health)
A History of Dental Implants
Tagged Under : Dental care, Dental health, dentist, dentistry, dentistry mn, dentists, oral health, oral hygiene, routine check, sedation, sedation dentist, Sedation dentistry, sedation dentistry mn, sedation dentists, tooth issue
The ancient Mayas were the first people to try out dental implants. Can you imagine going to a medicine man to get foreign materials drilled into your jaw? It’s unlikely strong anesthesia was available, too. Today, it’s much safer and more pain free to get dental implants. Getting a dental implant for structural purposes or dentures is never fun, but at least you live in modern times so there is anesthesia and hygienic offices to make the process simpler and easier.
A modern dental implant is manufactured to look and act as much like your other teeth as possible. Unfortunately, the key ligament that makes real teeth so effective at chewing is not able to be reconstructed with an implant. This means that though the brightness of your smile will be maintained, chewing with an implant will feel a little different than you’re used to.
Implants have been used throughout history for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, dental implants support the structure of your jaw and existing teeth. If one or more teeth in a row have been extracted, an implant can keep the remaining teeth from caving into the gap left behind. Dental implants are also used when visiting dentures. In fact, they are often the first step to more complicated dental procedures.
Getting back to the Mayans, their dental implants weren’t quite as refined as what we have now in modern times. In 1931 a piece of human jaw was found that dated back to 600 AD. Three shells, clearly chosen for their toothy shape, were embedded deeply into the jaw bone presumably to act as teeth and improve chewing.
When these remains were first discovered nearly a century ago, it was assumed by archaeologists that the shells had been embedded in the jaw bone after death. Over the years, though, it became clear that the shells had been inserted during life, proving that the Mayans had incredible medical knowledge and surgical skills. Whether the shells worked for their intended purpose is not known.
Over a thousand years later, in 1952, an orthopedic surgeon from Sweden named Brnemark made the next big advance in dental implants when he began experimenting with fusing titanium to bone. The discovery of titanium’s ability to fuse with bone happened by accident but further studies concluded Brnemark’s original assumptions.
He proposed his discovery be used in hip surgery but the medical community preferred it in dental surgery. Though other people used his technique, Brnemark himself didn’t place a titanium dental implant until the mid 1960s, more than a decade after he first made the discovery.
Though Brnemark started his discoveries in the 1950s, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that his ideas were used commercially. The company he sold his patents to has now placed millions of implants in patients around the world. His discoveries still have modern influence and it extends beyond dentistry and the dental implant to other fields of medicine as well.
I’m a dental assistant specializing in sedation dentistry in Minnesota. To learn more about dental implants, please visit my website.

