Dental Care: How Dental Bone Grafts Are Performed
The success rate of dental implants has continued to improve as the use of implants has continued to increase. Dental implants are a viable option for many people to replace their lost teeth. The process involves removing any remnants of previous teeth left in the gums, setting an abutment in place, and placing a fake tooth on the abutment. The process of building the new tooth begins with placing an implant into the bone and gums of your mouth, provided you have enough bone left on your lower and upper jaw. Here is how a dentist will perform a bone graft to make sure she/he has enough bone to securely anchor your new dental implants in your mouth.
Grafting Material
Your body will produce new bone if the upper and lower jaw areas get stimulated enough to produce bone. Bone grafting involves using bone pieces taken from your body, an animal like a cow, a human cadaver, or by using a bone-like substance made from synthetic materials. Bone taken from your body to graft on your lower and/or upper jaw will typically come from inside your mouth, your hip, or one of your ribs. You will determine what bone material you will use for the bone graft and where it is going to come from with your dentist.
In all cases, the processed animal, cadaver, and synthetic bone is sterilized, and all the organic components in the bone material will have been destroyed.
You may be given anti-rejection medications to decrease the ability for your body to reject the bone graft if bone parts are obtained from a cow or human cadaver.
Grafting Procedure
Your dentist will cut through the gums with a scalpel and pull back the gums so she/he can access your teeth root structure and jaw bone. The dentist will then clean out the root structure to remove the remnants of any teeth that have been removed previously.
The bone material used for grafting will be placed where the dentist wants to stimulate new growth on your jaw bones.A barrier is placed over the jaw area being treated to control the shape of the new bone as it develops around the grafted bone. The barrier is held in place when the dentist folds your gums back over and sutures them back into place.
You will typically have to wait up to 9 months (sometimes longer) before the new bone grows strong enough for the dentist to place dental implants in your mouth.
For more information, speak with professionals like Oral Surgery Associates Inc.