2. Alternative Solutions Partial and Full Dentures Crowns Bridges

3. History of Dental Implants In 1952, Professor Per-Ingvar Branemark, a Swedish surgeon, while conducting research into the healing patterns of bone tissue, accidentally discovered that when pure titanium comes into direct contact with the living bone tissue, the two literally grow together to form a permanent biological adhesion. He named this phenomenon "osseointegration".

6. Types of Implants Screw Implants (Left to Right: TPS screw, Ledermann screw, Branemark screw, ITI Bonefit screw) Cylinder Implants (Left to Right: IMZ, Integral, Frialit-1 step-cylinder, Frialit-2 step-cylinder)

7. Procedure First Surgical Phase (Implant Placement) Under Local anesthetic the dentist places dental implants into the jaw bone with a very precise surgical procedure. The implant remains covered by gum tissue while fusing to the jaw bone. Second Surgical Phase (Implant Uncovery) After approximately six months of healing. Under local anesthetic, the implant root is exposed and a healing post is placed over top of it so that the gum tissue heals around the post. Prosthetic Phase (Teeth) Once the gums have healed, an implant crown is fabricated and screwed down to the implant.

15. This work was supported by grants from University of Ferrara, Italy (F.C.), Fondazione CARIFE (F.C.), Guya-bioscience, Ferrara, Italy (F.P.), Fondazione CARISBO (F.P.), Finalized Project ‘‘Materials Tailored for Advanced Technologies’’, National Research Council (C.N.R.), Rome, Italy (A.P.), and Ministry of Education, University and Research (M.I.U.R.), Rome, Italy (A.P.).

16. Contract grant sponsors: Unife 60%; CARIFE; CARISBO; Guya-Bioscience (Ferrara, ITALY)

17. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by grants from Unife 60%(F.C.) and Guya-bioscience (F.P.).

19. Endorsing an intuition of a potential future successful application on mankinds, it was started a trial on rabbits using Biolok titanium dental implants, previously treated to obtain a surface coating with nanocrystalline film of metallic dioxide. Three groups of dental implants has been manufactured and surgically inserted in rabbits tibia: 1. uncoated dental implants (control); 2. TiO 2 surface coated dental implants; 3. ZrO 2 surface coated dental implants.

20. After thirty days bone sections have been analyzed in correspondance of the contact bone-implant zone and different osseointegration rates have been evaluated among the three groups above. The difference has been based on the presence of marks identifying small bone trabeculae. The results concerning osseointegration were extremely interesting: while in the cortical portion there are no differences among the three types of implants , around the implants embedded in the medullary portion, clearly appeared outstanding new bone apposition around TiO 2 coated implants (55%) and ZrO 2 coated implants (43%) if compared to the results obtained by uncoated implants (31%).

21. Medullary portion in endosseous uncoated dental implant section. new bone apposition = 31% Medullary portion in endosseous TiO 2 coated dental implant section new bone apposition = 55% Medullary portion in endosseous ZrO 2 coated dental implant section new bone apposition = 43%

22. Anatase surface nanoscopic topography (300 x 300 nm), produced according to the patented method .

23. Electronic Microscope zoom on zirconium dioxide coated surface