Dental Implant : A Brief History of Bicon

Building upon over twenty years of clinical success with the current Bicon implant design and the seventeen years of innovative research and development efforts which preceded its inception, Bicon’s dental implant system continues to lead the implant industry. In order to fully appreciate Bicon’s unique implant design, with its 1.5° bacterially-sealed* locking-taper implant to abutment connection, one should be aware of the history of the Bicon dental implant concept. Although the implant design may appear new to some dentists, its history goes back to a time well before 1982 — the year Professor Branemark visited Toronto to demonstrate what he had learned about the properties of titanium.

Bicon’s contiguous research history began in 1968 when Thomas Driskell, then a Senior Scientist at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, obtained a research contract funded by the Dental Research Division of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. The focus of the project was to develop a free-standing single tooth replacement with a cementable abutment component for acceptance of a cementable crown.

His early designs were fabricated from high density aluminum oxide, which studies had determined to be highly compatible as the implant material. The generally accepted medical opinion at that time was that all known materials used for orthopedic or dental implants would elicit a fibrous tissue encapsulation when implanted in bone. In 1971, Driskell was able to demonstrate histologically a direct bone to implant interface using a non-submergible free-standing tooth implant placed in fresh extraction sockets of Rhesus Monkeys: the phenomenon now known as osseointegration.

Driskell left Battelle in 1973 in order to pursue the development of human versions of his unique finned implant concept. First used in 1975, his Synthodont Dental Implant System, a one piece non-submergible design, offered the first truly successful free-standing single tooth implants to be used on a large scale for that purpose. They could be used for bridge abutments as well, and were also the first to offer the option of angled abutments. However, while offering excellent biocompatibility, ultimately, aluminum oxide ceramic which had always been used up to that point was determined by Driskell to be too brittle to be used for multi-component submergible implant designs which were beginning to gain acceptance. Thus, in 1981, one year before Professor Branemark’s visit to Toronto, Driskell developed the Titanodont Implant System — made from titanium alloy (Ti 6Al 4V ELI). Then, in 1985, he perfected his titanium implant design with the DB Precision Implant System, which is now known today as the Bicon Dental Implant System.

The Bicon Dental Implant System is now experiencing rapidly growing clinical acceptance throughout the world. The system’s unique and highly successful design concepts coupled with Bicon’s revolutionary clinical techniques continue to lead the trends of the implant market. The Bicon design has passed the test of time, while other systems are continuously undergoing revisions as they attempt to achieve the clinical benefits which have been inherent in Bicon’s design since 1985.

Dibart, S., Warbington, M., Su, M.F., Skobe, Z.