Why You Might Need Bone Regeneration
Bone regeneration is relatively common. At PermaDent, our periodontists regularly use bone regeneration related to:
- Tooth extraction
- Dental implant placement
- Atrophied bone following tooth loss
- Bone lost to gum disease
- Bone lost or removed due to oral cancer
- Tooth extraction
- Dental implant placement
- Atrophied bone following tooth loss
- Bone lost to gum disease
- Bone lost or removed due to oral cancer
The type and amount of bone regeneration necessary is often linked to the cause of bone loss.
Approaches to Bone Regeneration
In general, there are four common types of bone regeneration techniques. All types use bone graft material to encourage your body to build its own bone. Although you may initially start with a significant amount of graft material, over time, your body will remove much or all of the graft and replace it with its own bone.
Socket Preservation or Ridge Preservation
Your periodontist will use this type of bone regeneration after tooth extraction. The periodontist will fill the tooth socket with bone graft material, then cover it either with your gums or with a membrane designed to encourage healing. Sometimes, your periodontist will use both.
Ridge Augmentation
Ridge augmentation works to replace the alveolar ridge, which is the part of your jawbone that supports your teeth. After your teeth are gone, your body may remove this part of your jaw, and we will have to regrow it. You might also lose this part of your jaw to trauma, disease, or due to oral cancer surgery.
If you want dental implants, we will need to make sure there’s enough bone in the ridge to support your dental implants.
Sinus Lift or Sinus Augmentation
The sinuses are hollow cavities in your skull that underlie the face. Some of the sinuses are close to your mouth. When you lose teeth in the back of your upper jaw, your body can remove bone from the space between your sinuses and mouth, allowing the sinus to expand. A sinus lift restores the bone between your sinus and your mouth so that your implant dentist can safely place implants there.
We talk more about sinus augmentation on its own page.
Periodontal Bone Graft
Serious gum disease leads to the destruction of bone around your teeth. This can make your teeth loose, and can even cause you to lose teeth. Periodontal bone graft restores the bone around your teeth to help them remain secure and strong. This is typically part of surgical periodontal therapy and is common in pocket reduction surgery. It’s an alternative or complement to guided tissue regeneration (GTR).
HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?
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Types of Bone Graft
All bone regeneration procedures utilize some type of bone graft material. The type that’s best for your procedure depends on the size, shape, and strength of the graft material that you need. However, it will be one of these four types:
Autograft: An autograft–also called an autogenous graft–is bone material that comes from someplace in your body. This requires a second surgical procedure.
Allograft: An allograft comes from another human donor. This normally comes from a bone bank, which takes its bone from donors. The bone graft material may be sterilized so there are no living cells in the bone material, just the mineral bone material.
Xenograft: Xenograft bone comes from animals other than humans. Most often, this is cow bone. As with allograft, a xenograft may be sterilized.
Alloplast: Alloplast grafts are synthetic bone material. Bones are mostly mineral, so it’s possible to get a good bone graft material that is based on mineral pieces.
Growth Factors That Help Bone Regeneration
In addition to a bone graft, your periodontist may employ growth factors to encourage your body to grow bone around the graft. These are special proteins that encourage healing in your body. These can be especially helpful in encouraging the growth of blood vessels necessary to sustain your new bone.
One source of growth factors is platelet-rich plasma (PRP). For PRP, we will take a small amount of your blood and concentrate the healing factors. A similar but slightly different approach uses plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF).
Another approach specifically concentrates on the blood clotting factor, fibrin, and is called platelet-rich fibrin (PRF).
Finally, there are commercial sources of growth factors, commonly known as plasma-derived growth factors (PDGF).
Looking for Bone Regeneration in Torrance, CA
Bone regeneration helps your body restore bone lost to trauma, disease, or atrophy. It’s a complicated procedure that benefits from care by specialists with extensive training and experience in the procedure. At our dental implant center in Torrance, all our dentists are specialists who have been performing bone regeneration and related procedures for decades.
Please call (310) 325-9969 or use our online form to request an appointment at PermaDent in Torrance, CA.
