History of dental implant development

The origins of dental implants can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where fossilized human jawbones were found containing tooth-shaped implants inlaid with gemstones or carved from gold, representing the earliest prototypes of dental implants. The true history of dental implants began in the 1930s, with Formagini, a representative early scholar, considered the founder of modern implantology. However, because clinical applications significantly outpaced basic research at the time, numerous problems arose clinically, plunging the still-nascent implant technique into a period of decline. In the 1960s, Swedish scholar Branemark, after ten years of basic and clinical research, first proposed the theory of "osseointegration" in 1965, which was recognized at the 1982 Toronto International Conference on "Osseointegration in Clinical Dentistry."

Implant dentistry in China started relatively late, only being included in the Ministry of Health's planned textbooks for higher medical colleges starting in 1980. In 1995, Professor Zhang Zhenkang, editor-in-chief of the *Chinese Journal of Stomatology*, chaired the first symposium on dental implants in Zhuhai, establishing the National Collaborative Group for Dental Implants and Prostheses, laying the foundation for the healthy development of dental implantology. In 2002, the Dental Implantology Professional Committee of the Chinese Stomatological Association was established.