Considerations Regarding "Science" in Oral Implantology

Our clinics have decided long ago, based on our own experience and statistics of large patient groups treated by us, that we focus our work on the Method of Osseofixation only. Since 1998 we do not offer treatments which apply the (in our view outdated) Method of Osseointegration. We are aware however that even today many clinics still apply this older method.

Patients who wish to learn more about that older method are advised to find out about this in clinics which still offer it. Typical brands/examples for this method are named e.g. "Straumann^®" or "Nobel Biocare^®". Probably all other "2-stage implant systems" also function the same way as the mentioned brands. They lead to the same treatment results and they include the same difficulties and the same problems. They all require "bone augmentation" in many cases.

Comparative studies between the Method of Osseofixation and the Method of Osseointegration have never been done so far. Such studies seem unethical, because fully informed patients would never choose the Method of Osseointegration after being correctly informed about the existence of the Method of Osseofixation.

We have researched into the available literature: The available scientific literature on the Method of Osseointegration seems to violate severely the important ITT principle, and therefore the large body of scientific literature in the field of "osseointegration" cannot be taken as a reference and for comparison. Universities so far keep silence about this matter.

What is "wrong" with all those studies: Due to the large (but not in detail disclosed) amount of "patient selection" applied during published studies, the applicability and effectiveness of 2-stage implants on the average population (e.g. in a real cohort study) has never been investigated nor described. Published studies in the field of 2-stage implants must be considered to be a simple report on carefully selected cases rather than a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). Nevertheless many published studies (even in good journals) claim that they are a RCT.

Furthermore we would like to make the interested public aware of the fact that, since patients tend to provide less and less jaw bone the older they get, and at the same time they collect more diseases with increasing age, conventional dental implants may rarely be indicated (i.e. these individuals will be selected out and left untreated) in the group of the elderly patients (e.g. 60-65 years of age and older). This group of patients (actually patients which need implants most!) remains in the daily clinical reality vastly untreated whenever the older Method of Osseointegration is applied.

Large research reports on the Strategic Implant^® are available.

Finally we would like to mention here that in the USA and various other states of the world, insurers for malpractice claims advise their dentist customers to inform their customers (i.e. the patients), that the implants which work according to the Method of Osseointegration (and which they intend to use on them) are expected to work on average for seven to eight years only. Considering these facts, we assume that 2-stage implants are in fact rather temporary implants. It seems that they are far away from being a permanent solution. And due to the demand for "patient selection", they may be used only on a small group within the population.

For all the beforementioned reasons we have chosen not to use such older implant types on our patients.