There’s no question that dental implants are a game changer for replacing missing teeth. Only 6% of Americans have a dental implant now, but experts predict that in just two years, nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%) will have an implant.
We certainly see this same trend here at Willow Glen Dental Specialists, where our team is replacing more and more teeth with dental implants. While most people are good candidates for these superior replacement teeth, some require a little prep work in the form of a bone graft. We discuss why this is often a necessary step here.
If you’re among the hundreds of millions of Americans who’ve lost a tooth or two, you risk losing far more than the small piece of hard tissue that makes up the crown and roots.
Holding all of your teeth in place is part of the jawbone called the alveolar ridge. This bone is constantly remodeling itself and rebuilding bone tissue as long as it registers that the tooth is active. When you lose a tooth and the roots that reside in this bone, your body registers that the area is dormant and ceases to create new bone in the area.
In fact, the opposite happens and you quickly lose bone. In fact, you can lose up to half of the width of your alveolar ridge in the first year after losing a tooth, and most of this bone loss occurs in the first three months.
The primary reason why dental implants are the gold standard for replacing missing teeth is that we create a new tooth, complete with a metal post that acts as a root to hold the tooth firmly in place. We place this metal post into your alveolar ridge where the bone should grow around it, fusing it into place. Then, we place a crown on the post, creating a new tooth that is almost as stable as your old one, since it’s anchored into your jawbone.
As you might imagine, for your dental implant to be successful, it needs enough bone to support the metal post. So, if you’ve had considerable bone loss after losing your tooth and there’s not enough there to support an implant, we create more bone by performing a bone graft.
Think of a bone graft like scaffolding — we place a piece of hard tissue where we want more volume and density. Then your body does the rest by creating more bone tissue that surrounds the graft.
There are many different ways to perform bone grafts. We can use grafts that come from your own body or from donor tissues, or we can even use synthetic materials.
In most cases, we can perform your bone graft during a simple oral surgery here at our office, and then we wait for the graft to fuse into place, which can take several months. When we confirm that there’s enough of a strong foundation for your implant, we insert the post. In no time at all, you have a new tooth that allows you to smile, chew, and talk with ease.
If you have more questions about bone grafts before dental implants and whether this step applies to you, we invite you to contact our office in San Jose, California, by calling 408-478-9081. Or, you can request an appointment using our easy online form.
