Home / The Inventor
Dr. Sargon Lazarof,
D.D.S.
Inventor of the Ultratooth and of the first immediate-load dental implant to be cleared by the FDA. He wrote the paper that introduced the term immediate load in 1991, and has spent the three decades since building the device, the protocol and the training around it.
The premise
He did not set out
to improve the screw
implant.
By the late 1980s the profession had settled into a compromise it had stopped questioning: place the fixture, wait months for osseointegration, and leave the patient without a tooth in the meantime. Research went into coatings, surface treatments and thread geometry — all of it aimed at shortening the wait rather than removing it.
Dr. Lazarof took the problem apart differently. If a fixture could be made to lock itself into bone mechanically, at the moment of placement, then stability would no longer be something to wait for. That idea became an expandable implant with four apical legs driven outward by an internal cone — patented in 1991, cleared by the FDA, and described in the industry as the first major innovation in dental implantology since the early work of P. I. Brånemark.
In his own words
The problem the
profession stopped
asking about.
From Ignored Deficiencies in Our Current Dental Implant Treatments, written for clinicians rather than for marketing.
“That ‘Holy Grail’ has always been immediate tooth replacement in full function at the time of placement of the implant.”
Sargon Lazarof, D.D.S.
On waiting
Every month spent waiting for osseointegration is a month the patient spends without a tooth, and a month in which the socket architecture that was intact at extraction quietly collapses.
On bone loss
He argued in 1991 that cratering around cylindrical and screw implants is mechanical rather than bacteriological — a position he supported with photoelastic study and later with finite element analysis.
On the fix
Widening the implant apically rather than coronally sends lateral force down into the bone instead of up into the crest — what he calls the “Eiffel Tower effect”.
Thirty years
From a paper
to a platform.
The device has been in continuous clinical use, refinement and manufacture since the early 1990s — not revived from an old idea, but never discontinued.
-
1986
Doctor of Dental Surgery, with Honors
University of Southern California School of Dentistry. Postgraduate study of temporomandibular joint disease at the TMJ Research Foundation; specialised training in intravenous sedation, endodontics and cosmetic dentistry at USC.
-
1991
The paper, and the patent
Writes the paper that first uses the term immediate load and defines it as full function at the time of placement. Patents the implant body expansion design and the bevelled hex connection that the Ultratooth still uses.
-
1992
Published in Dentistry Today
“Immediate Load Implant Quickens Integration”, April 1992 — the first of a series of clinical papers running through Dental Products Report and, later, Dental Tribune International.
-
1996–99
Cleared for immediate load
The FDA clears the device for immediate load use, without an abutment — first in 1996, then in 1999 for the design cleared under the name “Sargon Immediate Load Implant – Ultratooth Model” (510(k) K981141). Root-form implants are generally cleared on the assumption of a healing period before function; this one is cleared to carry a prosthesis from the day it is placed.
-
1996–98
Sargon Immediate Load Implant™, then Ultratooth™
Trademarks filed in 1996 and 1998. The system is taught at USC and UCLA, at the Seoul Dental Institute, and at the USC First International Symposium in Monte Carlo.
-
1998
The textbook
The Immediate Load Implant System: Esthetic Dentistry for the 21st Century, published by Quintessence Publishing Co., Ltd.
-
2020
Training goes online
The certification curriculum is rebuilt as an online programme with hands-on training at ultratoothonline.com, so the protocol reaches clinicians directly rather than through a sales channel.
Record
Credentials
and appointments.
Clinical Professor at the USC School of Dentistry. Fellow of the International Academy for Dental Facial Esthetics, elected 2017. Member of the American Dental Association, the California Dental Association, the Los Angeles Dental Society, the American College of Oral Implantology, the International Congress of Oral Implantology and the Academy of General Dentistry.
Recognised by the International Congress of Oral Implantology at World Congress XV, by the USC School of Dentistry, and by the Alpha Omega International Dental Fraternity.
Selected patents
- Dental assembly and process for preparing a tooth prosthesisUS 5,681,167
- Implant assembly and process for preparing a prosthetic deviceUS 6,142,782
- Papilla dental implant and method of useUS 6,213,774
- Universal one-step drillUS 2008/0085488
- Dental securing mechanism with varying thread sizeUS 8,696,720
- Securing mechanism with dual expandable endsUS 8,828,066
- Dental abutment with coverUS 9,055,985
- Method and apparatus for expandable implantsUS 11,571,281
A selection. Dr. Lazarof holds more than forty patents and trademarks.
Selected publications
- Immediate Load Implant Quickens IntegrationDentistry Today, April 1992
- Single Tooth Replacement Using the Sargon Immediate-Load ImplantDental Products Report, 1995
- The Immediate Load Implant System: Esthetic Dentistry for the 21st CenturyQuintessence Publishing Co., Ltd., 1998
- The Sargon Internal Connection Single Visit Immediate Full Function ImplantDental Products Report, April 2006
- The Revolutionary Ultratooth: Immediate Load Implants Redefining Dental RestorationDental Tribune International, March 2018
- Innovations in Dental Implantology: A Conversation with Dr. Sargon LazarofJournal of Implant & Advanced Clinical Dentistry, June 2019
Still in the chair
He places the implant
he designed.
Alongside Biodent, Dr. Lazarof maintains a full-time implantology practice. Sargon Dental operates as both a treatment practice and a training centre, and patients travel internationally for treatment.
Encino
Sargon Dental, Encino — also the address of Biodent Inc.
West Hollywood
Sargon Dental, West Hollywood.
Pleasant Grove
Sargon Dental, Pleasant Grove.
Learn it from him
The curriculum is
taught by the person
who designed it.
Certification covers case selection, the expansion protocol, provisionalisation and the management of failing implants — the reasoning behind the device, not only its steps.
What comes next
Sargon Intelligence
Three decades of surgical reasoning, case archives and protocol development are being brought together into a single body of knowledge for certified providers — so that the judgement behind the device is available, not only the device.
In development. Details to follow.