People wear dentures (artificial teeth) when they lose their natural teeth. These dentures are called `removable dentures` since they are placed and removed by the patient.

These dentures can also be ‘fixed’ to the upper jawbone using titanium implants, thereby resembling the natural jaw-teeth relationship. Such ‘implant dentures’ increase the comfort and confidence of the patient.

However, many a time there is not enough bone in the jawbone to anchor the implants. We then need to do ‘bone graft’ surgery - that is, take some bone from the hip region, graft it to the jaw bone, wait for few months for it to heal and then do implant denture treatment.

A new technology was developed in Europe to do the upper dental implant treatment without using the hipbone graft. This ‘graft-less technique’, also called the ‘Zygoma technique’ (developed by Prof. Branemark & Nobel Biocare, Sweden) uses the cheekbone (Zygoma bone) for anchoring the implants. This has the following advantages:

• Reduced treatment time
• No need for hipbone graft (graft-less technique)
• Less discomfort for patient

Dr. R. Gunaseelan and his team on 30.3.07 performed this graft-less Zygoma Implant technique for the first time in India in Chennai at the Rajan Dental Institute.