Around 600 AD Mayans Were Performing Implant Surgery With A Hammer….
It was a crude form of implant surgery; archaeological evidence suggests that Mayans used ivory, shell and animals bones to substitute missing teeth by hammering them into the jawbone. Skip forward 1100 years and we see the experimentation of tooth replacement with bones from humans. But of course, there were complications when the body reacted negatively to foreign tissue.
Then in the 1950’s, a Swedish doctor discovered that bone and titanium are compatible—titanium is in fact the material still used today. But it was not until the 1980s when what is called implant dentistry was formally introduced. Now, 30 years later, the field of implant dentistry is still evolving, still changing and still finding ways of making it better for the patient.