Osseointegrated titanium fixtures in the treatment of edentulousness.

A 91 per cent positive 5-9 year result has been reported when using titanium implants and gold bridges to restore edentulous jaws. About 400 consecutive patients have been operated. The reasons for the good results are believed to depend on the anchorage of the implants in the living bone without interposing soft tissue layers. Repeated X-rays ensuring a strict parallelism are used to indicate direct bone integration. Some implants had to be removed in spite of still being anchored in the bone. In these cases SEM and TEM provided direct evidence of an osseointegration.