The US is home to a large and growing number of dental implant companies, whose implant manufacturing processes are performed in accordance with strict Food and Drug Administration policies. FDA monitors the manufacture of dental implants as closely as it does that of medical implants, with strict attention to sanitation and quality control.



What Dental Implant Companies Do

Dental implant companies produce all the components used in dental implant surgery; a dental implant is either screwed directly into a patient's jawbone, or built as a custom-fitted plate to be instated between the jawbone and gum.

The hardware of the dental implant is made of titanium, which is a metal highly compatible with the body's own systems and almost never causes and adverse reaction in the surrounding tissues. Titanium has been used for nearly forty years in hip transplantation.

The implant's visible tooth structure is of ceramic. How their titanium hardware and ceramic teeth are built and pieced together is the only thing differentiating the products of different dental implant companies, and different dentists may have preferences for different brands of implants.

Innovations From Dental Implant Companies

Dental implant companies are constantly looking for ways to improve their products and their market shares, and one of the recent innovations which many of them have adopted is the use of nanotechnology in their implant surface design. They claim that using nanotechnology will reduce healing time by as much as fifty percent and improve the integrity of the dental implant and bone bond.

Dental implant companies which have adopted this technology include 3i, Bicon, Astra Tech, and Straumann. Straumann's SLActive implants, in particular, have been well received by US dentists, but a survey indicated that many dentists using the SLActive implants did not realize they incorporated nanotechnology. A majority of the dentists surveyed said that among dental implant companies using the technology, 3i was the name the recognized most readily.

Another advance from the dental implant companies, and one which could have very far-reaching effects on the entire industry, is the introduction of the Immediate Load Implant from Sargon dental Implants. The Immediate Load Implant is inserted and ?expanded? to fill the bone opening immediately, giving the implant much greater stability than is normal at the initial stage of the implant procedure. The FDA has approved the Immediate Load Implant, which has been praised for causing very little bleeding or swelling.

Dental implant companies are always looking for the next big advance which will make dental implants available at less cost and inconvenience to a larger number of people. And with ever increasing life spans meaning that more and more natural teeth will have to be replaced, the dental implant companies should be busy for years and years to come!

There are more than 50 dental implant companies operating in the United States today. Of these, many have a web site, enabling dentists to research products and the public to research the procedures involved. Typing “dental implant comapnies" into a search engine will provide a huge amount of information about the companies and the products they make.