After you experience tooth loss, restoring your smile can seem as straightforward as replacing your lost teeth with a lifelike restoration. Sometimes, however, the subsequent consequences of losing one or more teeth can have significant impacts on your oral health. To fully recover them and restore your smile, you may need to address these consequences in addition to replacing the tooth or teeth that you’ve lost. Today, we look at the role that bone grafting can play in helping many patients recover from tooth loss and the effects it has had on their oral structures.
Your smile after losing teeth
Of the many different consequences of tooth loss, those that directly impact your dental ridges are often the least obvious. For example, losing the root of a tooth can leave a void in your dental ridge where the root used to stimulate it. This reduces the overall stimulation the bone structure receives, causing it to lose mass and density over time. As your jawbone grows weaker, it may also become less able to retain the rest of your healthy teeth. This can also make it more difficult to receive and support dental implants to replace your lost teeth.
How a bone graft helps strengthen it
When patients who want to receive dental implants also experience a loss of mass and density in their jawbone structures, bone grafting (or ridge augmentation/sinus lifting) may be an appropriate solution. The process of ridge augmentation or sinus lifting involves grafting donor bone structure to lower or upper dental ridge, respectively. This helps restore much of the mass and density that has been lost due to lack of stimulation, and may be essential in the overall success of dental implant treatment.
Improving your dental implant treatment
The loss of mass and density in your jawbone structure following tooth loss is a gradual process, and one of the greatest benefits of dental implants is helping to stop or prevent this process. However, if you’ve already experienced significant jawbone erosion, then the implant posts may need additional support before they can be successfully placed. Depending on your specific oral health concerns, grafting may be an important way to prepare your smile for dental implant placement, and ensure their long-term success in restoring your oral health.
Learn if you can benefit from jawbone grafting
After losing one or more teeth, your jawbone can also lose some of its mass and density, making it necessary to graft the bone structure to improve its health and integrity. To learn more, schedule a consultation by calling the Dental Centre of Conroe in Conroe, TX, today at (936) 441-4600.