The rehabilitation of oral defects by osseointegrated implants.

So far, preprosthetic surgery for oral defects improved prosthetic retention problems for only a limited amount of time and led to many side-effects. The alternative offered by the osseointegration technique developed by P.-I. Brånemark changed the concept of preprosthetic surgery dramatically. By means of a few permucosal titanium screws, bridges or overdentures can be retained even in cases of advanced jaw bone resorption. When the latter is extreme, an autologous free bone graft fixed by means of self-tapping titanium implants can offer the necessary support for sometimes elaborate prosthetic reconstructions. The marginal bone loss around Brånemark implants is very limited after a 1st year of bone remodelling, even when an autologous transplant has been used.