Everything You Should Know about Dental Bone Grafting

Dental bone grafts become essential if bone resorption has occurred in the jaw because of tooth loss. Bone grafts are routinely performed before providing dental implants as replacement teeth or if bone loss adversely affects the neighbouring teeth.

Dental Bone Grafts Explained

Dental bone grafts help add volume and density to areas of your jawbone where bone loss has occurred. When performing a dental bone graft, the oral surgeon might take bone from the patient’s body to provide an autogenous graft, purchase tissue from a human or animal tissue bank to perform allografts, or even purchase synthetic material alloplasts.

How Do Bone Grafts Function?

When bone grafting in Burlington, ON, place a graft; the material holds space in the body repair work. Bone grafts function as scaffolds on which the patient’s bone tissue can regenerate.

Who Needs Bone Grafts?

Patients losing bone in their jaw generally need grafting before considering teeth replacement solutions like dentures or implants, or the patient must have teeth extracted or suffers from bone loss because of periodontal disease.

Different Types of Bone Grafts

Four types of bone grafts are available for patients with specific situations affecting their jawbone. The different types of bone grafts include:

• Socket Preservation: Alternatively called ridge preservation, this graft is placed immediately into the tooth socket after tooth removal. The graft helps fill the gap left by the missing tooth and prevents the socket sides from caving in.
• Ridge Augmentation: Patients with missing teeth for some time experience thinning of the jawbone than earlier. Ridge augmentation helps increase the width and volume of the jawbone to help it provide a stable foundation for dental implants or similar restorative options.
• Sinus Lifts: the maxillary sinuses are located just above the upper molars. Patients losing their upper molars experience sinus drops into the spaces occupied by the tooth roots. A sinus lift enables oral surgeons or Periodontists to address this situation. In addition, the procedure helps raise the sinus to its appropriate position to allow the placement of a bone graft.
• Periodontal Bone Grafts: if infections of the jawbone from gum disease have eroded the bone supporting the teeth, the condition causes the teeth to loosen. In such cases, a periodontal bone graft performed around existing teeth help reduce mobility and provide support.

In most cases, patients seeking bone grafts for dental implant placement must wait to entirely heal from the procedure before getting dental implants. The recovery times can vary because every patient is unique. Rarely do dentists place bone grafts with dental implants at the same time. However, the decision to have this procedure simultaneously varies for every patient.

Happenings before Undergoing Bone Grafting

Before scheduling bone grafting, dentists perform an oral exam to evaluate the patient’s teeth, gums, and jaw. Next, they take x-rays and CT scans to determine the severity of the bone loss. Finally, dentists discuss the treatment options with the patient to create a customized treatment plan explicitly for them.

Dentists request the patient’s entire medical history and provide instructions on what the patient can do or must avoid before and after the procedure.

The Bone Grafting Procedure

The bone graft procedure requires the patient to receive local anesthesia in the mouth before the surgeon makes incisions in the gums to move back the gum tissue and make the jawbone visible. The dentist adds the material to bone graft teeth to repair the defects. In many cases, the bone graft might be covered with membranes for additional protection. The gum tissue is repositioned to close the incision with sutures eventually.

Is Bone Grafting Painful?

Patients who have undergone bone grafting procedures report little or no pain during the surgery. Patients taking the prescribed medications by the dentist and following post-operative instructions diligently also report similar findings.

Dentists performing bone grafting ensure patients receive appropriate anesthesia according to their dental anxiety. Although bone grafting is comfortably performed under local anesthesia, patients affected by dental anxiety might receive sedation or more potent anesthesia if required to manage pain during the procedure. The post-operative care suggested by the dentist also includes pain relievers and antibiotics to ensure patients recover quickly without complications.

Bone grafting procedures help increase patient’s eligibility to receive dental implants or other restorative therapies. In addition, the process helps restore the jawbone to its original condition following trauma from tooth loss and periodontal disease.

Patients with tooth loss and considering permanent solutions to replace their teeth with dental implants receive help from Walkers Line Dental Center, providing bone grafts. Therefore contacting this practice proves beneficial for patients with tooth loss or periodontal disease to augment lost jawbone.