Taking good care of one’s oral health lowers the chances of dental health complications, but sometimes, problems may still arise. Luckily, we live in a time where modern health care techniques are available, allowing therapy and restoration of teeth. Dentists make use of various health care procedures, and one of these is bone grafting. Read on to know more about what bone grafts are really for, and the benefits that you will have if you avail of bone grafting.

What are bone grafts?

Bone grafting is the process of replacing missing bone to repair bone fractures and bone loss. There are a lot of bone grafts that may be done all over the body, but today the focus is on dental bone grafting procedures. When you lose your teeth through gum disease or any kind of trauma, you may want to make use of bone grafts in order to keep your bone in its current form. Bone grafts may also be done even if you have had your teeth pulled out years ago; the procedure will restore your bone to its previous form.

Benefits of Bone Grafts

You may wonder why it is so important to keep your dental bones in its original form. Firstly, bone grafts ensure the restoration and maintenance of facial bone structures is essential to keep you from developing other dental diseases and problems. One such issue arises after tooth loss. Missing teeth can cause the alveolar bones (the bones that hold your teeth) to atrophy or waste away.

Alveolar bone atrophy usually occurs within the first three years of tooth loss or tooth extraction. This leads to a deformity which can prevent you from chewing your food the right way, speaking properly, muscle dysfunctions and even pain in your mouth. If you wait too long before you correct the problem, you may have insufficient bone or soft tissues to support your prosthetic replacement.

Bone grafting may highly improve the appearance and usefulness of implants, dentures and crowns that are needed, since these procedures need a sturdy jawbone to anchor on. It is also useful in preventing future problems that may arise due to insufficient bone density in your dental area. Grafts done in the anterior region is also helpful in preserving ridge topography, greatly benefiting the appearance of prior fixed bridgeworks.

Secondly, the space caused by the missing tooth causes other remaining teeth to shift, which may even result to the change of your facial bone structure.

Bone grafting may also be needed for other purposes and cases, too, like trauma, misalignmet, bacterial infection of the jawbone, tumors and sinus deficiencies.

Bone grafting procedure

The degree of bone grafting depends on the degree of bone loss – which will be determined by your dentist. The bone needed for grafting may come from a patient’s own bone (usually the tibia or hip) or may be sourced from a tissue bank.

Dental bone grafting is one of the most challenging procedures that dentists overtake. Fortunately, the success rates for dental bone grafting are very high. However, there are times when a bone graft may fail – and in the event, a second graft may be needed.