First came the Tata Nano, the world’s least expensive car at around $2900 USD, showroom new. Now Indian researchers are looking to lower the cost of dental implants with a $155 USD titanium implant.
The new implant is the result of five years of research by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Indian Institute of Technology and a team of dentists led by Professor Mahesh Varma. Professor Varma is the head of Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences, a dental college in Delhi, India.
The finished product will cut the cost of dental implants in India from Rs 25,000 to Rs 7000 ($555 USD to $155 USD at the time of this post). This is the first dental implant to be developed in India, until now dental clinics have imported the dental implants from the USA and Europe.
The implants can be used as single dental implants or as a set of implants to anchor bridgework or dentures (dentures implants). According to Professor Varma, cheap dental implants in India will make even full mouth rehabilitation affordable. The dental implant is currently in medical trails in India and the researchers have filed for a patent in both Europe and the USA. They did not state when the implant will be available to dental clinics in India or globally.
If the cheap dental implants become available at Indian dental holiday and dental tourism clinics, it could significantly cut the cost of getting dental implants or dentures implants treatments. Dental tourism clinic prices in India are already inexpensive when compared to dental costs in Australia, the UK, Ireland and the USA.
But the dental implant industry is highly competitive and the industry leaders and a lot of dentists will argue that not all dental implant brands are the same and brand name matters and how long the dental implant manufacturer has been researching and developing the dental implant matters. Remember dental implants have been around for 40 years.
We’ll just have to wait until the Indian dental implants hit the market and perhaps, someday, Consumer Reports will do a dental implant product comparison.
