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Dental implants. Are you a candidate?

When you have teeth that are missing, it can create challenges in while you speak and while you eat, never mind the role it plays in diminishing your confidence and how you sail through this world. If your smile is fragmented and in need of an upgrade, dental implants might just be the solution you are looking for. When it comes to dental implants, to be considered for treatment, you have to have ample tissue in your jawbone, enough to support the implant posts. A common side effect when you have experienced tooth loss, is the recession of your bone. To help existing bone while encouraging new growth, we may endorse bone grafting for dental implants. When you consider a bone graft, it can improve the health of your smile, the aesthetic of your mouth and it ensures you stay a great candidate for implant posts.

What does bone have to do with it?

Restoring and maintaining facial bone structure is important for several reasons. In the case of dental implants, we require the bone be as close to its original dimension and position as possible, to achieve the greatest results. In a percentage of clients we see, the lack of bone leaves them without enough healthy bone to secure a dental implant. In these cases, there are treatments that can aid in this journey. • Above the back teeth in the upper jaw, there are ways to increase the bone height, by generating new bone in the sinus. We refer to this procedure as a sinus augmentation. When a highly experienced surgeon works on this procedure, the outcome is a quality, predictable, beautiful result. Without this procedure, many patients wouldn’t be able to keep or retain a dental implant because this part of the mouth is a common place for missing teeth. • While there are numerous ways where additional bone can be incorporated, one straightforward approach is to retrieve a piece of bone from elsewhere, securing it to an impaired area, as an onlay graft. The new piece of bone will eventually connect to the foundation and when given enough time and when it’s healed and developed, it can support a dental implant in a more favorable position.

Where can you get extra bone from?

A skilled dentist can harvest bone from any number of additional sources but typically it’s taken from the lower jaw or from the chin. There are also times when the shinbone or the hip could be considered. When we use your original bone to create new ones in a different area of your mouth, there’s going to be a recovery period in both the donor site and the spot where surgery occurred. Because your own bone is typically thought of as the “gold standard”, many clients choose the temporary discomfort over the long term benefits.

Other sources of bone.

There are other options for you and your dentist to consider. With today’s medical advances, we can harvest bone from a bovine (cow), porcine (pig) or it can be created from synthetic materials which have been prepared with human safety top of mind. Regardless of which route you end up pursuing, all that’s happening is the bone graft is providing a structure into which the new bone will cultivate, ensuring it’s ready to receive and accept a dental implant when the time is right. It can take anywhere from a few months to a year for new bone to be mature enough to receive a dental implant. This is not an immediate fix so don’t be impatient, wanting to move along to the next chapter. Depending on the volume of bone you need it could take awhile to develop, delaying your dental implant for a short time. Many surgeons also use another extraneous procedure called guided tissue regeneration. With this procedure, slow-moving bone cells are provided a barrier between the fast moving soft tissue cells. This gives them time to fill a space. This is a resorbable barrier which will naturally fade after a few months.

Does bone grafting affect the overall length of treatment?

If you require bone grafting for dental implants, invariably it will increase your treatment time. Nonetheless, when executed properly, it will ultimately improve the overall outcome. Bone grafting does require a substantially higher amplitude of skill to perform and it’s often more an elaborate procedure than the relatively simple placement of a dental implant. In certain situations, we will recommend combing the 2 procedures; the dental implant placement with bone grafting along with the placement of a barrier membrane. This reduces the treatment time considerably and it produces an end result that couldn’t be achieved otherwise. Depending on your specific and unique characteristics, we may recommend bone grafting as one distinct stage, before moving on to the actual dental implant placement. In the end, whatever method or procedure your dentist recommends to improve the bone quality… the time, effort and expense is generally well worth your while. Our friendly Supreme Dental Cranbourne dentists will answer your questions and concerns. Contact us today at (03) 5995 3819.


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