Dear editor

It is now over 50 years since Per Ingvar Brånemark and his team first placed implants in a group of edentulous human subjects and, following the publication of his 10 year results,¹ the spread of osseointegrated oral implants has been ‘inexorable and exponential' around the globe. In the UK, 50% of the over 75 age group is still edentulous (Oral Health Survey 2009) with a considerable proportion of those affected being so for more than 10–20 years. In Scotland, our over 75 year-olds number around 700,000 with circa 360,000 being edentulous. If we surmized that a mere 1% were suffering with the effects of a severely resorbed ridge, then this would represent a considerable disease burden in society. The benefit that implants can provide for such cases is accepted as being considerable, as demonstrated by numerous ‘quality of life' studies. Over the years many patients have been helped in the UK by the NHS, the University teaching hospitals and, probably most prominently, by the private sector, but the numbers treated as well as the numbers who could still benefit are largely unknown.