Chennai to host global clinical trials
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A Chennai dental hospital has been chosen as one of the nine sites for an international clinical trial on zygoma tooth implants.
Zygoma teeth are the new-age permanent implants used instead of dentures by people who have lost their teeth because of various diseases or genetic disorders.
Zygoma prosthetics shorten the time taken for a tooth implant procedure from one year to 72 hours.
“Many young people lose their teeth to aggressive peritonitis, or gum disease. We do not know what causes the disease, but the sufferer’s teeth become loose and fall off and even his jaw bone is destroyed,” explains Dr R. Gunaseelan, oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Rajan Dental Institute, which will be Asia’s second trial centre after a hospital in Hong Kong.
“Surprisingly, 90 per cent of my patients who lose all their teeth are below 40 years of age. It is inconvenient and a social embarrassment for young people, especially those of marriageable age, to wear a set of dentures,” he adds.
Zygoma technology was first evolved 15 years ago and is available across nine centres worldwide, but there have been no comparative studies to prove that it is better than the old-fashioned method of tooth implants.
This randomised clinical trial ‘Zygoma vs Conventional implants’ will be conducted to measure the outcome of both types of procedures and assess which is better.
“In patients with such gum diseases, the jaw bones are damaged to the extent that we need to take a graft out of the pelvic bone .The patient has to wait for six months for it to heal.
Then, the implants are inserted into the jaw and the patient has to wait another six months before his teeth are put in,” says Dr Gunaseelan, explaining conventional dental implants..
Zygoma implants on the other hand are specially designed to be fixed into the cheek bone, which lasts 40 years, making it ideal for young patients.
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