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BONE GRAFTING
What is a dental bone graft?
A dental bone graft replaces missing or lost bone in your jaw. Healthcare providers commonly place bone grafts prior to dental implant surgery or when bone loss negatively affects your oral health. Initial healing takes about a week. But it can take up to one year for the bone graft to fully heal.
A dental bone graft is a type of oral surgery that increases the volume and density of your jaw. A healthcare provider adds powdered bone grafting material (natural or lab-made) to areas where you have lost or thinning bone.
Dental bone grafting holds space in your jaw so your own body can do the repair work. It’s like a scaffold on which your own bone tissue can grow and regenerate.
Types of dental bone grafting material include:
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Allograft: Human bone purchased from a licensed donor bank.
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Alloplast: Lab-made dental bone substitute. (Hydroxyapatite, a naturally occurring mineral, is one example.)
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Autogenous: Your own bone, taken from another area of your body.
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Xenograft: Animal-derived bone purchased from a licensed donor bank. Bovine (cow bone) and porcine (pig bone) are common examples.
What conditions are managed with a dental bone graft?
Dental bone grafting can:
- Fill in an empty tooth socket after an extraction.
- Increase the width and volume of your jawbone.
- Lift maxillary sinuses (the sinus cavities below your eyes and alongside your nose). This is necessary before dental implants in some situations.
- Provide a strong foundation for dental implants.
- Rebuild your jaw before getting dentures.
- Repair damaged bone from dental trauma.
- Stabilize and support loose teeth.
- Treat bone loss due to infections like gum disease.
How common are dental bone grafts?
Dental bone grafts are very common. Dentists and specialists (like oral surgeons or periodontists) do these procedures routinely. Providers currently place about 2.2 million bone grafts every year, globally.
Procedure Details
What happens during a dental bone grafting procedure?
Exact steps vary depending on where you need the bone graft. The following is a general outline of what you can expect during your procedure.
During dental bone grafting, your provider will:
- Numb your gums with local anesthetic. (If you opted to be put to sleep for surgery, your provider will give you sedation meds, too.)
- Make an incision (cut) in your gums.
- Gently move your gums away from your jawbone.
- Clean and disinfect the area.
- Add dental bone grafting material to areas of bone loss.
- Cover the bone graft with a membrane (also purchased from a tissue bank) to protect it. Many membranes absorb and go away on their own during healing. Others don’t. So, your provider might need to remove it during a follow-up visit.
- Reposition your gums.
- Close the incision with stitches.
In some cases, your provider might add platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to your dental bone graft. Your provider gets the PRP from a sample of your own blood and uses it to promote healing and tissue regeneration.