When you lose a tooth and you fail to replace it right away, your jawbone usually recedes and shrinks. The result is a significant bone loss, which occurs during your natural bone renewal process that is usually stimulated when your teeth come into contact with each other. Through this renewal process, the old bone tissue is removed and a new one is created.
So, if you don’t replace your missing tooth with a dental implant, the jawbone underneath the socket doesn’t get stimulated and therefore doesn’t get renewed. With this deterioration, your jawbone won’t be able to support a dental implant. Therefore, your doctor will have to do bone grafting in the affected area to widen and strengthen your jawbone before installing the implant. This discusses the importance of bone grafting in dental care.
Importance of Dental Bone Grafting
Enough Bone Support
For dental implants to remain firmly secured in your jawbone for many years, they need enough bone support. Unfortunately, this is not possible if your jawbone has already receded. That’s why it is important to go through bone grafting before getting dental implants. The bone graft will add volume and thickness to your jawbone, creating enough space for the implants.
Support for Neighboring Teeth
When your jawbone recedes, it shrinks and weakens, putting the neighboring teeth at risk of falling off. Furthermore, the neighboring teeth move toward the empty socket, giving you a skewed bite. But with a bone graft, your jawbone remains strong and healthy, giving the neighboring teeth the needed support. However, this support won’t last if you do not replace the missing tooth immediately.
Restoring Jawbone Structure and Form
Dental bone grafting helps to restore your jawbone to its earlier form after tooth loss or removal, gum disease, or trauma. It is also important for reconstructing your jawbone structure after oral surgery. For instance, when you undergo wisdom teeth extraction or removal of tumor, your jawbone might sustain injuries that will lead to permanent defects. But with dental bone grafting, you can reconstruct your jaw structure and restore it to its previous profile.
Restoring Oral and Maxillofacial Profile
With bone grafting, scientists and oral surgeons have been able to reconstruct their patients’ maxillofacial region in order to restore facial form, function, complete rehabilitation of occlusion and speech. Even though these reconstruction procedures may appear complex, the technological advances in dentistry have made it possible for surgeons to perform dental bone grafting with minimal delay.