Dr Dirk U. Duddeck & Dr Franz-Joseph Faber, Berlin & Cologne
Introduction
Dental implants are supposed to be clean when delivered in a sterile packaging. Implant surface pollution with organic particles and/or major inorganic residues originating from the production process are suspected to cause insufficient or missing osseointegration of dental implants. Unintended micrometer-scale particles may induce a foreign-body reaction with a loss of bone in the early stages of osseointegration. In cooperation with the University of Cologne and the Charité-University Medicine Berlin, the Medical Materials Research Institute Berlin analysed the quality of dental implants in three consecutive studies since 2008. In 2015, extensive material contrast images were obtained and qualitative and quantitative elemental analyses were performed on 135 dental implants using the same study protocol. Results of the recent study and comparison with previous analyses showed an increasing spread of quality in the market.