Abstract
ITI, a kind of endosseous implant, is generally designed as a perforated hollow cylinder or a perforated hollow screw. It is made of pure titanium as an implant material. The undersurface of the implant to be anchored in bone is coated by a titanium-plasmaspray. It is well known that a direct bond is made without any soft tissue at the interface between ITI implant and the bone. These findings were mainly obtained from animal experiments and rare human cases.
We present a case of removed ITI implants (two-part, hollowscrew type) owing to miscalculation. We observed its interface between the implants and the bone by SEM, undecalcified thin section for histological study and EPMA for an analysis of the main constructive elements.
As a result, the following findings were obtained.
1. There was a direct bond between the implant and the bone interface.
2. The bone formation was seen in the gaps among microparticles arising from titanium-plasmaspray coating, as well as within the side perforated portions.
3. For the EMPA data, the implant material mainly consists of titanium and the bone is chiefly made up of calcium and phosphorus. The distribution of titanium has a contrary relation to calcium and phosphorus which makes a good interface.
We concluded that ITI implant could be expected to have good biocompatibilty in humans as in animal experiments. However, great care should be taken in ITI implementation.
