Durability of Implants and Implant Manufacturers

The implantology domain has become a market of interest for patients as well as for dentists. For example, when looking at the United States of America, dentists have been proved to use implants 73% more between 1986 and 1990, and the numbers are still increasing (Stillman & Douglass, 1993). Thus, the expansion of the dental implant market is booming. As Global Data showcases in the following graph, the market is expected to gain multiple shares in the upcoming years.

Therefore, with the expansion of the implant market, it has become exponentially more difficult to identify and trace the implants placed in the mouth of patients. Effectively, the durability of implant manufacturing companies has also been an arising issue. Implants are easy to replicate and can also vary in shapes or forms which encourage multiple companies to enter the market during its expansion (Ehrenfest & Rutkowski, 2012). However, with the competitiveness of the market, the durability of those companies has been hard to maintain. Consequently, this phenomenon has rendered dental healthcare professional’s work difficult and more laborious than it should. In this article, the understanding of the multiple factors that are posing as obstacles to the traceability of implants will be presented and the consequences it has engendered for dentists and their patients.

The market of implants has become highly diverse which has been both beneficial and detrimental to the dentists of the world (Norton, 2020). Effectively, certain opinion articles written by professionals have suggested that the market passed from one controlled by specific companies to a more diverse one controlled by multiple companies (Ehrenfest & Rutkowski, 2012).

In their opinion, this enabled a certain diversity that offered more products for the dentists to answer the needs of specific patients (Ehrenfest & Rutkowski, 2012). It is also a key factor in the expansion of the market since the trends in the medical field are pointing towards more personalized treatments for patients (Norton, 2020). However, even though it does benefit dentists, the diversity of the market, as research suggests, can be detrimental to the companies that cannot assert their position in the market and that now need to find more innovative products in order to last in the competition. As an example, in the Spotimplant database, which is the most complete database in the world to this day, 77 companies out of 386 are already out of business.

Other issues arise pertaining to the patients. Effectively, with the diversity of the implant systems and their technical aspect being hard to grasp, patients are not in measure to actually understand which implant is placed in their mouths, and if they do not hold an implant passport, they will find difficulties maintaining a healthy implant placement.

This phenomenon is also directly linked with medical tourism which enhanced this issue exponentially and created confusion for dentists when dealing with an implant patient coming from abroad.

Consequently, as an example, some United Kingdom professionals are demanding and expressing the need for an implant registry due to some cases where the patients, who pay out-of-pocket for implant treatments, find themselves with unknown untreatable implants and even go to court to defend their case (Norton, 2020). They also encourage a 3-year clinical registration of the implant placed in order to be able to trace it and reduce the legal problems that come out of the unidentification of an implant (Norton, 2020).

References:

1. Stillman, N., & Douglass, C. W. (1993). The Developing Market for Dental Implants. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 124(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.1993.0085
2. Ehrenfest, D. M. D., & Rutkowski, J. L. (2012). Evolution of the Dental Implant Market: An African Tale Revisited. Journal of Oral Implantology, 38(3), 201–202. https://doi.org/10.1563/aaid-joi-d-12-editorial.3803
3. Norton, M. R. (2020). Will any dental implant do? British Dental Journal, 228(4), 243–244. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-020-1302-7
4. Global Data (2018). Dental implants market projected to reach $5.9bn by 2028. https://www.globaldata.com/dental-implants-market-projected-reach-5-9bn-2028/.