Straumann Research In Perspective

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Putting Company "Research" in perspective. 4/7/2012 1:08:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time Niznick@aol.com

Thanks, Jerry. My partner is a bit hard core about Straumann and their years of published research like their SLActive 2010 publication. Relying on company research to choose an implant system requires first making the decision which company one trusts. Straumann spends about $12M a year supporting ITI and more on universities in order to get the best research results money can buy... and some of the highest paid opinion leaders to advocate their products. If one relies on just company information, as many Nobel customers did for several decades, they overlook the obvious differences in systems that are important to clinical success. There is no study other than the VA Study, that compared one surface to another in a clinical trial, and that only showed that HA surfaces (and perhaps just rough surfaces) was better than acid etched, smooth surfaces. Straumann introduced SLA to replace TPS, claiming that it cut healing time in half. This was a lie. All they did was show that you could load their implant after 8 weeks instead of the recommended 16 weeks. If they were doing an honest comparison, they would have loaded TPS and SLA implants at 8 weeks side by side and evaluated the results, which would have been the same in my estimation. In fact, their key clinician, a periodontist from Tx, Wilson, presented at the 2006 AO meeting in Seattle. He must be an excellent surgeon because he showed 98% success with immediate load in extraction sockets with TPS Straumann Implants. You may recall my question from the audience..."so do you think you would have gotten 99% success with SLA?" to which he had no answer. The SLA vs SLActive torque test shown below is of no clinical consequence. If you can get 35Ncm of initial torque, you can load immediately....if not, no one in their right mind is going to load at 3-4 weeks when the bone attachment is less than initial stability for both SLA and SLActive. The accepted protocol is to wait at least 8 weeks and as you can see, by 6 weeks they are both back up to the same level. SLActive just gave Straumann a reason to raise prices.