Humanitarian Award to Prof. P-I Branemark, Prof. Anders Tjellström, Dr. Kerstin Bergström

by Anne-Marie Riedinger, Ghent, Belgium, 26th IAA Educational Congress, June 2nd 2012

“I am pleased to congratulate your team Prof. P-I Brånemark, together with Prof. Anders Tjellström and Dr Kerstin Bergström, for the Humanitarian Award (IAA 2012, Ghent, Belgium).

Prof. P-I Brånemark never followed the herd. He is one of a kind, a unique strong character whose research and its tremendous scientific and medical applications have changed the face of the world. He is the inventor of biomaterials and also the inventor of bone-anchored hearing aids. Nowadays, titanium plates consolidate broken bones, hips and knees are replaced with titanium prostheses, edentuous patients get bone-anchored teeth and patients with facial defects are rehabilitated with bone anchored prostheses. More fields also benefit the applications of his inventions.

Prof. P-I Brånemark has revolutionized the field of Anaplastology. Nowadays, patients from all over the world benefit from a secure bone anchored prosthetic rehabilitation. He is such an important key person in the development of facial prosthetics for he has opened the doors of our profession to a fourth dimension with the development of new technology. Therefore, at each Congress speakers often allow a dedication to the work of P-I. during their lectures. 

Indeed we also are grateful to the endless work of the original Team composed by Prof. P-I Brånemark together with Dr Anders Tjellström and Dr Kerstin Bergström who have spread the word around the world, who have improved the techniques and have defended the importance of an active collaborative team work for minimal surgical procedures and maximal results for the patient.

I was very fortunate to having approached P-I Brånemark several times and especially in Göteborg, Sweden, for the interview he gave for the 24th IAA Congress, Paris, France in 2009. He kindly accepted this interview to appear on our website on this occasion. 

I was touched by his radiant empathy and his dedication towards his patients. I also had the opportunity to go to the P-I Brånemark Institute in Bauru, Brazil, October, 2010, where together with Dr Marcelo Ferraz da Oliveira and Dr Kerstin Bergström, we treated patients and educated future brazilian anaplastologists. P-I wanted this Institution to allow numerous patients with facial defects to be treated for free. therefore, I was impressed in this Brazilian community by the worship for P-I and Barbro his wife. He has earned over 100 titles of Doctor Honoris Causa from major Universities and Institutions in all continents, and I believe this is a world record. 

There is no doubt Prof. P-I Brånemark is an unbiased and humanitarian universal leader!”