A BRIEF HISTORY OF DENTAL IMPLANTS:    a dream come true

Dr. Chow Kai Foo

BDS Singapore

FDSRCS England

Cert. of Implantology  Germany

A PRECOCIOUS CENTURY

We are now into the 21^st Century. The previous century, the last century of the millenium, the 20^th Century was a precocious century. Precocious because it has superceded the previous 50 centuries of recorded human history and civilization in terms of the accumulation of knowledge. In one quantum leap of a single century, we increased many many times more than all the raw knowledge accumulated in the previous 50 centuries of recorded  history. Today, we can no longer master a subject in a few short years of intense study like in the 19^th century backwards. We can only launch ourselves into the beginning of a lifetime of learning, focusing on the subject or profession of our choice constantly looking out for the sudden breakthrough that may  rearrange all our past knowledge of the subject.. Because knowledge has become so vast and increasing so fast continuously, we cannot afford to stay still, but to keep on and on learning.

A DREAM COME TRUE

In the field of dentistry, it is fitting that the dream of its practioners for thousands of years have at last come to pass in the last century, the audacious century, or some might want to call it the precocious century. Today, a dentist can replace a lost tooth at will and almost as good as new! As dentists, or stomatologists, which is a more accurate term, we are extremely fortunate to be practicing today.

“The goal of modern dentistry is to return patients to oral health in a predictable fashion. The goal of modern dentistry is to restore the patient to normal contour, function, comfort, esthetics, speech and health, regardless of the atrophy, disease, or injury of the stomatognathic system.”     Carl E. Misch