Replacing and renewing: synthetic materials, biomimetics, and tissue engineering in implant dentistry

Hundreds of thousands of implantations are performed each year in dental clinical practice. Dental implants are a small fraction of the total number of synthetic materials implanted into the human body in all fields of medicine. Basically, these millions of implants going into humans function adequately. But longevity and complications still are significant issues and provide opportunities for the creation of improved devices. This manuscript briefly reviews the history of dental implant devices and the concepts surrounding the word "biocompatibility." It then contrasts the foreign body reaction with normal healing. Finally, the article describes how ideas gleaned from the study of normal wound healing can be applied to improved dental implants. In a concluding section, three scenarios for dental implants twenty years from now are envisioned.