Bone grafts are used because some people don’t have enough bone to support future dental implants or to support remaining teeth. Bone loss may have occurred due to:
In dentistry, the ability to replace a lost tooth is dependent upon bone quantity (amount of bone present) and quality (type of bone present). An implant, bridge, partial or denture will be most successful if the quantity and quality of bone is favorable.
Sometimes it is necessary to buildup or augment bone for future restorations. Some of the types of bone augmentations are:
Socket-preservation grafts are routinely performed in our office. The technique is a safe and highly-effective procedure to ensure that enough bone is present for any future dentistry. If a tooth is removed, bone loss will occur. To help counter this bone loss, a bone graft can be placed in the extraction socket and covered with a membrane to help reduce the amount of bone loss. This is the most common performed to help “build up” healthy bone. The bone used in grafting can be from the patient (autogenous) or from a donor (allograft). It usually takes 3 to 6 months for the bone graft to fuse and become part of your natural bone.
