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I overview _Introduction It all started with an inquiry from a well-known professional journal of implantology asking for a contribution to acknowledge their having been in business for 15 years. Then there was the inciden- taltelephonecallbyanacademicteacherwhohad accompanied and supported me in my first steps in implantology. When I asked him about the up- coming publication project, I received a both spontaneous and surprising reply, “The last 15 years—thosewerethemostimportantyearsinim- plantology”!Thisfromarenowneduniversitypro- fessor who was instrumental in establishing im- plantology—I was impressed. Later on I had to ask myself, “Is this really true?” The result of my trac- ing this development is this article—a personal retrospective. _Phases of implantology If one considers oral implantology with regard to its major developments, three phases are evi- dent: (i) the empirical and experimental phase; (ii) the arrival of implantology in universities and sci- ence; (iii) the mass phenomenon of implantology. I would like to add that this is a rough and probably superficial division to some extent. Please, how- ever, allow me to apply it within the scope of this personal—and not exhaustive—review. Lookingbackatthesepastfifteenyears,Iwillbarely touch on phase II, but will discuss phase III fully. This entailsdifferentdirectionsandpriorityareasthatcol- leagues working in implantology experienced. When I browsed through implantology textbooks and jour- nals from this period, I realised even more that im- plantology had undergone considerable change in this relatively short period of 15 years. I would like to recount my highlights of implantology from this pe- riod in the following paragraphs. _Farewell to the tristesse of papers A seemingly minor issue to start with: the variety and quality of dentistry-specific print media and of digitalmedia,particularlyprintlayout,hasdeveloped substantiallyduringthepast15years.Thisholdstrue not only for implantology, but also for dentistry as a whole.Theappearanceofsomeprofessionaljournals upuntilthemid-1990swasreminiscentofanofficial legalamendment,butamazingthingshavehappened since.Thequalityofcolourprinting(whichisthenorm now,butusedtobesubjecttoasurchargeforauthors who wanted to include colour images), the accuracy of images, the paper—all of these make for a high The most important years in implantology A very personal retrospect Author_Dr Georg Bach, Germany 06 I implants1_2012 Fig. 2 Fig. 3Fig. 1