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Staple in the local community
For as far back as 1800s Harley Street in London has been regarded as the epicenter of the city’s medical and dental world. It has been the place to go for the highest standard of excellence, professionalism and care within the fields of medicine and cosmetic dentistry. It emerged as an area of medical and dental excellence around 1816 when the large scale Victorian townhouses of the area offered ideal dwellings for the city’s emerging dental and medical professionals. These structures afforded them the ability to house both their lodgings and practices within the same building. Since its formative days, when the area was home to practices of Florence Nightingale and other notable doctors and practitioners, it has consistently provided quality, discreet care for kings, celebrities and citizens alike and has earned its reputation as the place to go for dental implants on Harley Street.
Gradually moving with the times
From as early as 2000 AD, rudimentary examples of cosmetic dentistry were being used to fill gaps or missing teeth in ancient China. Carved bamboo cosmetic teeth were used to replace missing teeth which, although a crude undertaking by today’s standards, paved the way for contemporary methods of filling gaps in a patient’s mouth. The first recorded use of metal as a replacement for a lost tooth came from an Egyptian pharaoh who lived around 100 BC. This was again a crude and rudimentary undertaking but was essential in steering treatment to the technological heights of today. Throughout the ages, there were numerous attempts to fuse metal, bone, rare minerals and other various materials into teeth, to either fill holes or act as prosthetic replacements. However, it wasn’t until 1952 that treatment really began to take shape. This came about through an orthopedic surgeon discovering the distinct properties required for the successful fusion of bone and metal to take place, through the discovery of a titanium cylinder which had fused with a rabbit’s femur bone during a study on bone healing. From this discovery, it was hypothesized that titanium could be utilized as a dental tool for implants, and in 1965 the first titanium implant was inserted into a human volunteer.
Technological ingenuity
From this, treatment continued to grow and develop into the excellence of modern science and innovation that it is today.
The process of installing an implant initially begins with a small hole being drilled into the gap in a patient’s gum, in the space where the missing tooth (or teeth) should be. Then a titanium socket is inserted into the hole and left to heal. During this brief healing period, the titanium fuses with the bone in the patient’s gum which allows the fixture to be firmly fused within the gum. Afterward, a replica tooth (or denture) constructed from porcelain or plastic is then fixed into the socket and thus the gap is bridged with a virtually indistinguishable good-as-new tooth and the patient’s smile is restored. Treatments such as this offered on Harley Street can be massively effective in providing patients with a renewed sense of self-esteem and confidence as it affords them the ability to smile without fear or embarrassment of exposing large or unsightly gaps in their mouths.