Indra’s blog: About what Cows, Pigs, Magnesium and Berlin have to do with my Implant Dentistry.
- indrarampersad
- Jun 21
- 4 min read
Indra’s blog: About what Cows, Pigs, Magnesium and Berlin have to do with my Implant Dentistry.
I am sure you read the title of this blog and probably thought I totally lost it. What a random selection of words. But no, all will be clear soon. ;)
Two months ago, I received a wonderful invitation from Straumann, the provider of my implants, one of the biggest and most trusted brands in Implant Dentistry worldwide. If I wanted to come and learn more about their partner Botiss biomaterials by visiting their factory in Berlin (Germany).
Family life is always busy and to be honest, it is especially busy this month of June. However, who can resist such an offer?
I have always been very curious about the biomaterials that we use in dentistry (and beyond), so I hopped on a plane this Wednesday to fly to our German colleagues.
As a clinician you have to make very important choices about what materials you can trust and especially what is best for your patient. No person or mouth is the same, even though the treatment can be similar. Often a patient presents itself with a tooth (or multiple) that are failing or have failed some time ago and the option to extract has been made. If you want to get rid or avoid dentures, because they are wobbly, make you feel sick or totally insecure implants can be the way forward. It is the most natural replacement of a tooth that we can offer. However, to be able to place this titanium post in the bone, the basis needs to be right. There needs to be enough hard (bone) and soft (gums) tissue to create a functional and esthetically pleasing outcome. And unfortunately very often that is not the case. After all, if all was good and healthy, the teeth would not have needed to be extracted.
This dilemma can be solved in different ways. Many moons ago we had to do often harrowing surgeries on the patient to take bone from another place in their body (hip or chin) to replace what they were missing in the mouth. You can imagine the motivation of the patient had to be pretty high to go through surgery like that. Over the years new inventions came, often together with innovations in prosthetic surgery as these face similar challenges. It all started with the use of bovine (cow) bone (called xenograft), treated with chemicals and heated to a high temperature to be stripped from all the bovine characteristics to make it safe for use in humans and was the golden standard for many years. These granules or blocks of bone work like a matrix where your own bone grows into to make strong, new bone. Followed by the availability of synthetic (alloplast) and even human donor bone (allograft).
The donor bone dissolves while new bone is getting formed replacing the former slowly over time.
To keep this new bone in place and to cover it under the gum we need to use a membrane (most of the time). Often surgeons will use one that is made of the pericardium (membrane around the heart) of the pig, because it is very strong and tear resistent. More and more developments for the healing of the gums after extraction or surgery were developed with the use of porcine collagen or skin. New synthetic options came.
So where does my trip come into all of this? Botiss is one of the global providers of these biomaterials. They are absolutely on the forefront of developments in this field. And now Botiss have developed a membrane made from magnesium including screws that all fully resorb, which means less surgery and advanced healing for the patient. They are adding hyaluronic acid to some of their products to make handling of the materials even easier and healing quicker and more predictable.
We met an absolutely passionate team with heart and skin in the game (loved the word play, couldn’t help myself ;)).
Their openness to show us what they do and how they do it, all they offer and what is coming our way the coming years was a real eye opener. It was not a massive factory, but it was clean, ready for more growth and felt like we were making the right, safe choices for our patients.
The Botiss team love to educate, but also understood we might like to see a bit more of Berlin while we were there. On arrival we started with a tour through the capital. We stopped at the Berlin wall, which obviously holds so much history. I can vividly remember what a world news it was when this wall came down, but after the stories on this tour I can even more understand the impact this had to the people of East-Berlin especially, but Germany as a whole.
And I couldn’t help to think how well Botiss choose the place of their head office, development facility and factory. It stands for all they stand for. The walls of the old Berlin buildings are like the bone they develop: old that gets patched up with new is like the new bone growing into the existing matrix. This city has seen enormous change, had to be built up from the ground after the war, had to fight for their place in an ever changing world. They had hope there would be a time to look ahead. And with Botiss on their grounds there is so much to come.
A big thank you to the enormous generosity and hospitality that I got to experience.
We always keep learning, keep growing and keep innovating for the patients we serve. Sometimes we are lucky and it turns out to be a nice little trip away.
Have you been waiting for the right time to start your implant journey? Come and speak to us. We will guide you through the matrix of options.
With my gratitude,
Indra x
Just a small reminder that I am training for the Great North Run. I am taking on the biggest half marathon of the North East in aid of the Sick Children’s Trust and the Tiny Lives Fund.
If you like to know more or help me support these amazing charities, you can do so here:
It is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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