Surgery free, 3D printed implants | Hacker News Reader

Surgery free, 3D printed implants

bioimplant.at

68 pointsrusabd44 comments

http://www.bioimplant.at/faq-2/

> Are there any long-term follow up publications?

> We have attempted to publish papers in leading journals, but have repeatedly encountered resistance to this innovative idea from “The Establishment”. Dental industry perferes to sell simple titanium screw type variations at the price of 200 Euros (a middel class cellphone!) and industry recruited experts simply prefere to make money with risky and costly operations and love to teach confusing drill sequences and fill guide lines.

Why not make the paper available anyway, like on arxiv.org?

In particular, if they're so confident about the absurdity of the critiques, they should publish those as well. Maybe dentists have some real concern that these inventors are dismissing out of hand - the best way to dispel that, if false, is to make it public.

Other content in this article makes me a bit nervous.

For example, it strongly implies at several points that the dental association has a conspiracy to keep patients using less safe technology because it leads to recurring surgeries:

> No one can argue against this logical access to immediate implantology.

> Surgeons like simple titanium screws because they mean more surgery. More surgery means more money.

I asked about this five months ago, and was told my theory was "asinine," and that here was no conspiracy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361392#13362425

I'd be curious to hear lancewiggs's views on this tech.

I've seen the actual rejection letters from prominent dental implant journals stating that this treatment is not of interest to their readership, and to seek publication elsewhere.

Perhaps it's not a coordinated conspiracy, but this really is a 'WTF?' situation.

Might as well have bright red flashing letters at the top of the page saying "WE ARE QUACKS." It's possible this product is great, but my immediate reaction to any medical product that positions itself as the underdog fighting against the evil establishment is to run far, far away.

Sadly, as much as I would like the content all to be true, 'Quack' is my assessment too. They say they have been selling this in Austria for 11 years but want crowdfunding to take it abroad. Somehow that does not add up.

And in my experience dentists are really pretty open to innovation, especially 3d scanning and machining. Most recently I got a grinding guard and instead of taking an impression my dentist actually used a Danish scanner that pieced together a couple of hundred individual photos.

Not every great inventor is also a great businessman.

Actually, this is rather rare.

History is full of examples of superior tech/ideas struggling or even failing because of this.

Allow yourself to assume this is one of these cases before dismissing it based on the reverse assumption.

Also consider that Austria != the valley.

Immediate reaction from me too, the "dentists won't adopt it cause it makes them lose money" rings exactly like the story of the air powered car and similar.

Previous papers are readily downloadable on the website. It's just the latest papers (with the longest-term follow-ups) that Dr Pirker is holding out for, hoping to get them published in one of the top journals.

But yes, bioRxiv would be a good idea!

To answer some of the naysayers: this is definitely not a quack treatment. The CEO is unconventional, to be sure, but the patient always comes first.

Just to address any lingering doubt: I'm a recipient of this implant, so yes: first hand experience, dogfooding, etc.

Two days ago SENS foundation head told a similar story. The publication system is biased toward low hanging fruit and nothing hard and innovative gets promoted. Didn't have time to ask for more information about the subject sadly. But your comment makes me more than curious now.

I work with Dr Pirker (CEO/developer of BioImplant).

AMA!

BioImplant is one of those truly disruptive technologies: a new paradigm. It's interesting (as a HN reader) to see such a tech story unfold in 'real time'.

The biggest obstacle so far has been to foster awareness of this treatment option via popular media (ie. an article in an English-language newspaper/magazine). The dental world is fixated on simple screw type implants, which are costly, unnatural, and very rarely satisfactory.

Since you don't get a mold beforehand I'm guessing this is 3d printed. How do you get the 3d image of the tooth ?

Yes, the title is slightly incorrect, there's no 3D printing involved.

The implant is milled from a 3D scan of the extracted tooth. It's very much an artisan process, which we're hoping to make entirely digital.

X-ray → CAD model → CNC machine?

That's pretty much the idea!

A fully digital process would allow this treatment to be offered by any dentist, anywhere in the world (with a good internet connection, of course).

Could I have the X-ray taken in the US, digitally sent to your lab, and then show up at your lab with the new implant waiting? (Hypothetically)

Not yet...

With the right investor(s), that 'hypothetical' will change into an affirmative. (And you'd only have to travel to your local dentist.)

No worries, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

There are fully automatic machines for making crowns (I have two made on such a machine), surely the process should be much the same.

A crown is just the external part of the tooth. That's relatively easy to scan and reproduce. It's much more difficult to scan the root while it's 'in situ' in the jaw. Hence the careful extraction...

You need to seriously work on your website. It reads like one of those homeopathy websites promising water with molecular quantum memory that preys on stupid people who don't understand science.

Strangely, that's not the impression I get. For example, looking at the video's here communicates the concept pretty thoroughly:

http://www.bioimplant.at/pictures/

That's just my impression though. :)

>The dental world is fixated on simple screw type implants, which are costly, unnatural, and very rarely satisfactory.

Sure, but when "BioImplant™ is only suitable for an immediate implant (where extraction and implantation are part of the same procedure). You must already have a fresh tooth socket" traditional implant is the only way : (

I'm curious as to the long term failure rate of this type of implant. Teeth shift and there will be bone loss around it to some extent. It may be a better option but I don't think it is as perfect as the marketing makes it seem.

Good points but I think it will not be bone loss if you are actually using this tooth, same way you don't have bone loss around titanium screw.

I don't think anyone knows potential issues with this one, except that they sound better. Current implants last from 10-25 yrs sometimes and are the best solution. This has potential to provide even better one.

It's so cheap, it almost doesn't matter.

Well, no, it's not that cheap... The upfront cost is as much as a regular titanium implant.

The real savings come later: there's no subsequent treatment to deal with infections (peri-implantitis) or other complications.

BioImplant is basically 'fit and forget'.

Computer crowd say "plug and play" ;)

Long term, there have been no failures.

There have been 5-10 year follow-ups, no issues at all. In particular, the use of zirconia has proven to be as effective (and much more esthetic) than titanium.

Thank you for posting this! I have a tooth I need extracted due to a fracture from stress, and have dreaded getting the screw implant in my lower jaw. Science to the rescue!

If you're planning on getting this treatment, it's very important NOT to have your tooth extracted beforehand.

Noted!

Sounds amazing. Just one question. Is there any possibility of this technology being licensed out to other countries in the near (or mid term) future? I live in India and would love to get this done, but travelling to Europe for this is not all that feasible.

Edit: corrected the country

Tell me this is true! Because it does make sense. I want this to be true :).

I would totally be game to go to Vienna, provided I can pay for procedure (well and need one). Implants, the ones with screw are supposedly one of the most durable ways to fix your tooth.

Seeing this on HN is a little confusing because I will hopefully be soon getting an implant by Dr. Pirker. I was in has practice a couple of weeks ago and we had a long, for me very inspiring talk not only on my implant but on the worrying state of medicine and society in general. And yeah, from what I understood, he is looking for investors for a more automated manufacturing process for the currently hand-crafted implants.

Why is it confusing?

Heh Heh Heh

HN has a pretty open submission mechanism, and gets all kinds of nifty stuff submitted here that people could find interesting.

It's not a call for "Hackers" (of the evil system cracking kind, etc) to do anything nasty with them.

"Non Implant", "Dental"... should be in the tittle. In saying that, pretty cool. I'd love to see consumers be able to do this.

I was expecting breasts.

I was expecting knees

Sounds reasonable. Obvious limitation is that it is applicable only right after extraction and with healthy bone at the site.

Quick heads up that your website doesn't display properly (I can zoom out so that your entire site is a thin column on the left of the screen) on my phone. I'm on Chrome on a Samsung Galaxy S5.

What is funny to me is that by avoiding "geometry" the tech looks very primitive; but if thinking in terms of tissue and context, it's so much better than a screw.

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