Bone Grafting: What It Is & How It Helps

A healthy smile involves more than just healthy teeth; it also involves healthy gums and a jaw bone. Your jaw bones play a crucial role in your oral health. These bones hold your teeth in place and keep them from shifting. if a tooth is missing for any reason, then the jawbone will begin to deteriorate, weaken, and recede. The teeth stimulate your jaw bone to keep it strong, and when they are gone, your body decides that the jaw bone is no longer necessary.

You also need your jaw bone to be intact and strong in order to replace the missing tooth with a dental bridge, dental implant, or dentures.

Bone grafting is a common procedure that involves the reconstruction of your bone. it involves replacing lost bone mass with new human bone. It is meant to maintain your gum ridge to support strong teeth.

Bone Grafting After an Extraction

When you’re too, your general dentist graft bone material into the extraction site. This will preserve the bone and prevent it from deteriorating. The dentist will pack the empty tooth socket with human bone granules and cover it with a thin membrane and stitches. The human bone granules will appear much like sand. The bone grafting procedure, in this case, is short and can take as little as a half an hour.

Bone Grafting for More Serious Bone Loss

The longer that your tooth has been missing, the more damage will be done to your jaw bone. If your tooth has been gone for a while, then there is likely advanced reabsorption of the bone. For instances such as these, your own bone from another part of your body is typically used to replace the missing bone in your jaw.