
Surgery free, 3D printed implants - rusabd
http://www.bioimplant.at/
======
Pyxl101
[http://www.bioimplant.at/faq-2/](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?

~~~
mikeash
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.

~~~
alkimie2
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.

~~~
virtualritz
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.

------
fractallyte
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.

~~~
candiodari
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 ?

~~~
fractallyte
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.

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

~~~
fractallyte
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...

------
adventurer
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.

~~~
jbob2000
It's so cheap, it almost doesn't matter.

~~~
fractallyte
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'.

~~~
agumonkey
Computer crowd say "plug and play" ;)

------
toomuchtodo
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!

~~~
fractallyte
If you're planning on getting this treatment, it's very important _NOT_ to
have your tooth extracted beforehand.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Noted!

------
Santosh83
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

------
desireco42
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.

------
mponw
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.

~~~
justinclift
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.

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

~~~
phaed
I was expecting breasts.

~~~
drewm1980
I was expecting knees

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

------
lasfter
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.

------
agumonkey
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.

