Bone Grafting Services

Understanding Bone Grafting Treatments

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Bone Grafting Explained by Our Oral Surgeon

Your bone is an important asset when it comes to your oral health and function as it sets the foundation of your smile. Not only does it support your teeth, but it also helps preserve your facial structure. But your bone needs the same stimulation of tooth roots to remain dense and strong. When teeth are extracted or lost, the jawbone no longer receives stimulation and so will resorb and shrink. Bone loss can lead to shifting and loosening of the remaining teeth, loss of lip and cheek support, jaw joint problems, and more. To help ensure that these functional and esthetic consequences don’t occur or worsen, Dr. Ryan provides bone grafting, a surgical procedure that involves transplanting dental bone graft material in areas where the bone has resorbed, or when a tooth has been extracted to create enough bone to support dental implants.

As an oral surgeon, Dr. Ryan is especially qualified to offer comprehensive bone grafting services such as sinus lifts – a procedure that adds bone material to the upper jaw to avoid disrupting the sinus cavity with dental implants. He has completed additional years of advanced surgical training outside of dental school in complex bone grafting treatment and is proficient in the latest techniques and materials used in these procedures. As experts in oral surgery, Dr. Ryan is qualified to restore bone structure and volume loss due to extensive tooth loss, advanced gum disease, cancer treatment, severe oral trauma and in cases of congenital deformity. With years of dedicated surgical experience under his belt, at NuSet Dental Implants and Oral Surgery he can restore your jawbone after tooth extraction and prepare you for life-changing dental implants through comfortable, predictable bone grafting treatment.

Bone Grafting to Replace Bone Loss

The purpose of bone grafting is to restore the proper density, height, and width of the bone in the jaw. Bone grafts can be either from the patient or from a donor source and may either be a bone block or granules. Prior to your procedure, we’ll conduct our periodontal treatment, scaling and root planing – removal of all plaque above and below the gumline and smoothing out tooth roots to help your gums reattach to your teeth. Dr. Ryan will provide you with a personalized treatment plan including such things as proper oral hygiene and avoiding food and beverages for a minimum of six hours before your appointment.

In many cases, we offer bone grafting treatment before we place dental implants or during implant surgery to ensure the long-term success of dental implants. Below are additional bone grafting techniques.

Socket Preservation

Socket preservation is a bone grafting procedure that’s completed after tooth extraction. This involves packing bone graft material into the empty tooth socket. Socket preservation slows the resorption process where the tooth is missing. It can also help preserve the health of the bone until a dental implant can be placed.

Ridge Augmentation

Ridge augmentation refers to a bone grafting procedure that restores the natural density and contours of part or the entirety of a jaw ridge. Restoring healthy bone levels to a jaw arch can allow dentures to fit more comfortably and fit your gum line naturally.

Sinus Lifts

When bone in the premolar or molar areas of the jaw has lost density or volume, you may benefit from a sinus lift. Gently lifting the sinus cavity, bone grafting material can be placed beneath to restore proper bone height and density. As a complex surgery, our skilled oral surgeon, Dr. Ryan is an experienced and knowledgeable choice for this procedure.

What to Expect During a Sinus Lift

After a customized treatment plan with Dr. Ryan is created, we’ll take X-rays of the jaw and sinus area. Local anesthesia is applied and a small incision in the bone where the tooth used to be is made. We use this hole to navigate to the sinus cavity where we carefully push the sinus into a higher position in the cavity. This creates a free space between where the bone ends and the sinus begins, which allows for the bone to grow naturally to fill the space. A bone graft is then placed into the space created during the procedure to prevent the sinus from falling back into its original position and encouraging bone growth. Once the bone graft is in place, we’ll close the gum tissue, and the healing process will begin. This recovery time can last anywhere between four and nine months while the graft mends with the jaw.

The Benefits of Bone Grafting

Bone grafting seems like just a functional treatment meant to improve your oral health. But this treatment also has more widespread benefits. In conjunction with restoring your self-confidence, bone grafting repairs the bone in your jaw to its previous form and maintains the existing bone structure after you’ve had teeth extracted. Tooth and bone loss because of decay, trauma, disease, or genetics can lead to numerous problems that affect your ability to eat, facial esthetics, oral and physical health, and personal well-being. By restoring bone levels in your jaw, we can treat any infection and disease, as well as replace any missing teeth with dental implants to support the muscles in the skin that create your facial shape and appearance in one of our conveniently located offices. Having a smile restored to proper function and esthetics can significantly improve your confidence, health, and quality of life!