At the beginning there was a screw...

There were attempts already in the last century to anchor artificial roots out of gold, platinum, ceramics etc. in the jaw. But not till the application of titanium in the sixty's represented a breakthrough in implantology.

Titanium is a base metal, which appears to be completely unsuitable due to its trend to corrode. But exactly this characteristics lead to a high passivation, i.e. inertia of the surface and thereby to an extremely high biocompatibility.

The first experiments were with different forms of implants, like basket-shaped implants, blade-, needle-and hollow cylindre implants. Today screw implants are mostly common.

At the beginning a polished and turned surface was seen as the most fitting one, because of the biocompatibility and little affinity to biofilms and plaque. However this kind of surface doesn't cause an ingrowth of the implant.

After developing different surface tempering procedures, like etching, sandblasting, plasma covering / coating the surface of titan.the breakthrough in 'osseointegration'- a linking of the implant to the bone through an ingrowth - was realised.

Other materials are currently of very little importance, especially there is no long-time clinical experience with e.g. zircon implants.