Bone Grafting
A bone graft is a surgical procedure that replaces missing bone with material from the patient's own body or an artificial, synthetic, or natural substitute. The graft not only replaces missing bone, but also helps your body to regenerate its own bone. This new bone growth strengthens the grafted area by forming a bridge between your existing bone and the graft material. This bone loss can be reversed. Over time your own newly formed bone will replace much of the grafted material.
Whenever a tooth is removed, the bone that was around the root starts to resorb, or go away. Within just a few years, most of the bone may go away entirely, leaving thin, weak jawbones. If implants are needed in one of these areas, we now have the ability to grow bone where needed. This gives us the opportunity to place implants of proper length and width, and it also gives us a chance to more effectively restore esthetic appearance and functionality.
There are different types of bone grafting. Socket grafting is a simple procedure done when the tooth is extracted that speeds the healing of the extraction site and prevents the majority of future bone loss. This is recommended following most extractions, especially if an implant or bridge is eventually to replace the tooth.
If bone loss has already occurred, ridge split grafting can build up the width of bone and onlay bone grafting can build both width and height.
The final type is called sinus lift or sinus augmentation. There is a more detailed explanation of this procedure under the tab "sinus augmentation" in this section, "Our Services".
For a short video explanation of grafting, go to the "Educational Videos" tab at the top of this page and go to "Implants" and then "Grafting".
