Afraid of dental implants?

Dental implants, made of titanium or titanium alloys,  are widely used to provide a durable solution to missing teeth and restore functionality.

Unfortunately, after a variable number of months, about 30% of the patients may experience peri-implantitis, a disease that manifests itself by jawbone regression around the implant and gradual exposure of the implant’s threads. As of  today, there is no clinical solution to delay or stop the progression of the disease that may ultimately lead to implant’s extraction.

Moreover, the reasons for the development of peri-implantitis are not well understood and various factors have been invoked when the studies focused only on the inflamed tissue.

A recent work, published in the prestigious Advanced Surface Science Advances by A.E. Shavit (M.Sc.), co supervised by Dr. K. Shemtov Yona (Mech. Eng. Technion and TAU School of Dentistry) and Prof. D. Rittel (Mech. Eng. Technion), takes a radically different approach at the problem by examining retrieved implants’ surface at the nano scale, instead of the surrounding tissue.

This breakthrough study reveals for the first time that the native protective titanium oxide layer gets severely damaged with time, rendering the implant more prone to biodegradation. In other words, the implant that is traditionally considered as biocompatible, loses this property, and becomes a bio-reject.

While centered on dental implants, the study has more general implications to the field of metallic medical implants, with the hope that if the surface layer of implants can be made more resistant to their environment, part of the pathology may be solved.

Link to the article: https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S2666-5239(23)00187-3