Preface

Implantology is no longer a religion, a para-science or a para-odontology (where "para" stands for something aside reality, undemonstrated, or supernatural—as in "parapsychology"') ; it is a full-fledged science. I saw a few days ago a lady of 50, who has been carrying a Putti nail in her left femur for the last seven years, following a fracture. Now the femur is of all bones the most heavily loaded, stressed, and exposed to the wear of age and strain; and yet this lady carries her nail as if it were a part of her own body, never giving it a second thought. And the same is true of dental blades—although some people insist that the slit in the gum is permanent, and that food remnants and bacteria get into the groove between blade and gum. The experiments of Robert A. James and Robert L. Schultz show that this is not true. They show, rather, that the blade causes the formation of collagen all around it, this collagen acquiring the structure of a basement membrane, even sprouting hemidesmosomes constituting bridges between the blade and the gum`, the blade itself working as a cell condensate. This finding provides the final positive answer to research on dental blades—a sort of biological blessing. Once lined with connective tissue, the blades are no longer "foreign" to the body: so much so that they allow the formation of hemidesmosomes. The composition of desmosomes is by now well known: these structures contain 76% protein, 17% polysaccharides, 6% phospholipids, and 4% cholesterol'. In the neoformed connective tissue we also find fibroblasts, which retain their capacity for making collagen and elastic fibers; and the same fibroblasts go to fill the holes in the blades, there to produce a compliant connective that works as a shock-absorber.

The biological problem so happily solved, there remains of course the technicality of making these bio-mechanical handicrafts: not a simple matter, and not one to be lightly improvised or treated cavalierly. As a reminder of this, just look at Linkow's own painstaking work; look, I'm tempted to add, at his very countenance: which expresses neatness and precision better than many words.

The substrate of implants is also important. Who would build a house on brittle or flooded grounds? In some cases, the substrate must be prepared and fortified with suitable treatments. Beside sex hormones, fluoride, and other conventional drugs, the newly discovered hormone

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