Per-Ingvar Brånemark facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Per-Ingvar Brånemark
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| Born | 3 May 1929 Karlshamn, Sweden
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| Died | 20 December 2014 (aged 85) Gothenburg, Sweden
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| Nationality | Swedish |
| Alma mater | Lund University |
| Known for | Osseointegration research |
| Awards | European Inventor Award 2011 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Orthopedic surgery |
| Institutions | Gothenburg University |
Per-Ingvar Brånemark (born May 3, 1929 – died December 30, 2014) was a Swedish doctor and professor. He is known as the "father of modern dental implantology." This means he helped create the way we use dental implants today. The Brånemark Osseointegration Center (BOC) was named after him. It opened in 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
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About Per-Ingvar Brånemark
Per-Ingvar Brånemark studied at Lund University in Sweden. Later, in 1969, he became a professor of Anatomy at Gothenburg University.
He received many important awards for his work. In 1992, he won the Swedish Society of Medicine's Soederberg Prize. People often called this award the 'mini-Nobel Prize'. He also won a special medal from the Swedish Engineering Academy. This medal was for his amazing new ideas in technology.
Brånemark was also honored in the United States. The Harvard School of Dental Medicine gave him a medal for his work on dental implants. He held over 30 honorary positions across Europe and North America. This included being an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in the UK. In 2003, he received an honorary doctorate from the European University of Madrid. He won the European Inventor Award in 2011 for his lifetime achievements. He passed away in 2014 when he was 85 years old.
Dental Implants and Research
In 1978, a very important meeting happened about dental implants. It was called the Dental Implant Consensus Conference. Experts looked at old information about dental implants. They also set up new rules and standards for how dental implants should be used.
In 1982, Brånemark shared his research in Toronto. This work had started 15 years earlier in Gothenburg. Brånemark studied something called osseointegration. This is when bone naturally grows and fuses with a foreign material. His discoveries made the field of implantology exciting again. The Toronto conference made Brånemark's implant methods famous. It was one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in dentistry since the late 1970s.
The Brånemark System of dental implants was later bought by a company called Nobel Biocare. You can still get these implants today.
Understanding Osseointegration
Brånemark's work on osseointegration changed dental implant dentistry. Before him, this field was not very popular. But his research helped it become accepted and taught in dental schools.
Older dental implants used to be different. Some were called blade implants. These were metal pieces placed into a bone cut. Others were transosteal implants. These used screws inserted into the lower jaw. People thought these implants only stayed in place because of their shape. They didn't know that metal could actually fuse with bone.
Thanks to our understanding of osseointegration, new implants became the standard. These are called rootform endosteal implants.
The idea of bone fusing with material was first talked about by other scientists in the 1940s and 1950s. Brånemark's studies came a year after. He was looking at rabbits using tiny cameras made of titanium. These cameras were placed into the rabbits' lower leg bones. He and his team found something amazing. After a while, they couldn't remove the titanium cameras from the bones! The bones had grown around and fused with the titanium.
This led Brånemark to create and test dental implants using pure titanium screws. He called these screws fixtures. Even though dental experts didn't like implantology much before, Brånemark's strong proof of how well implants worked changed their minds. Other scientists also repeated his findings. This made the dental community fully accept implantology.
Brånemark's son, Rickard, is continuing this important work. He is creating artificial arms and legs. These prostheses are anchored directly to the human skeleton.
The very first person to receive a modern dental implant was Gösta Larsson (1931–2006). This happened in 1965. Professor Per-Ingvar Brånemark placed the first titanium dental implant into Larsson. Larsson was from Sweden and had severe jaw problems. He agreed to the test because he wanted to have teeth again. He used his implants for over 40 years until he passed away in 2006.
See also
In Spanish: Per-Ingvar Brånemark para niños
- Osseoincorporation
- Dental Implants
- Osseointegration
