Titanium, Rabbits, and Tiny Microscopes: Dr. Brånemark’s Unlikely Discovery of the Modern Dental Implant

If you ever went searching for your car keys but found a $100 bill instead, you might feel a little like Dr. Per-Ingvar Brånemark. He was looking into how blood flow affects bone healing—and he ended up discovering osseointegration.

Better osseointegration is one of our primary goals at Himed. When we develop surface treatments and coatings, we do it with the aim of improving the integration of implants with a patient’s bones. The very phrase “osseointegration” was coined by Dr. Brånemark, who is now considered the father of the modern dental implant. Before his work, the medical community was pretty sure that such a thing wasn’t even possible.