Dental Implants

Dental Implants offer a solution that is most like your natural teeth, allowing for full chewing action and stimulation of the jaw, to minimize bone loss. Your natural tooth consists of a crown and root. The root is embedded in the jawbone, providing stability. When a tooth is lost, bone grafting material and a dental implant can be placed in the bone to replace the natural root and a permanent dental crown is placed over the implant. Function is then fully restored.

What are the benefits of implants?

Because dental implants are designed to mimic the structure of your natural teeth, they provide a highly stable support system. You will experience decreased bone loss and gum recession associated with missing teeth. Plus, you will maintain an improved bite, and be able to eat all the foods you enjoy, contributing to better health, and of course a beautiful smile.

Bone Grafting and Dental Implants

What does your dentist mean when he says a Bone Graft is necessary to place your dental implant?

The success of a dental implant, it's ability to support a dental restoration, is very much dependent upon how much bone is available in the site where the implant is placed. There are lots of things that affect the bone volume including things like periodontal disease, trauma and infections and it is not unusual to open up a site in the mouth for implant placement and find out that some of the critical supporting bone is missing. No problem.... We have great techniques available to us to replace missing bone. We can increase the height of bone and the width of bone. We can fill in anatomical voids in bone thereby creating new bone and we can fill in all sorts of defects that develop when teeth are lost. We can even use grafting techniques to prevent the loss of bone in circumstances where bone would normally be lost like the extraction of a tooth.

Replacing missing bone or adding to existing bone is very often essential to the success of a dental implant and the ensuing restoration. The techniques to do this are well documented and should be used when indicated by any dentist who places dental implants. Most of us will have a good idea when additional bone or bone repair will be necessary before actually starting the placement of a dental implant and the patients should be informed of this possibility. Sometimes, however, we do get fooled and run into areas where unexpected bone grafting is indicated. As long as the dentist is prepared to replace or add to the existing bone and the patient understands the bone grafting procedure, there should not be any problem with these techniques.

Types of Bone Grafting:

There are many ways in which bone grafting can be done. Sometimes it is as simple as collecting bone when preparing an implant site and then reusing the bone for grafting purposes. Whenever we can use the patients own bone for repairs or additions, we will get the best results. In extreme cases, bone can be harvested from areas outside the mouth. The most common area is the hip. Needless to say, when this type of bone graft is done, everyone has to be fully prepared and you would usually find yourself in a hospital setting with a physician actually removing the bone from your hip and your dentist placing it in the appropriate areas of your mouth.

Very often, we can use "bone in a bottle" to do bone grafting for dental implants. This bone is specially prepared from cadavers or other sources and used to get the patients own bone to grow into the repair site. It is very effective and very safe. Sometimes synthetic materials can be used to stimulate bone formation and sometimes we even use factors from your own blood to accelerate and promote bone formation in graft areas.

Very often, bone grafting is done in combination with what dentistry refers to as a "Barrier Membrane Technique". Membranes made out of special materials are placed over bone graft sites to keep out the types of soft tissue cells we do not want and promote the growth and migration of cells which will turn into normal, healthy bone. These membranes are very successful and are used quite a bit these days to promote sound bone formation. The membranes are usually removed at a later date, but sometimes they can be resorbed by the body and disappear all on their own.

In addition, it is not uncommon to use "screws" and "tacks" to secure membranes and bone grafts at an implant site. Sometimes these pieces will also have to be removed at a later date, but rest assured that all of these components and grafting materials are safe and effective and their use has gone a long way in increasing the success rates of dental implants.

Dr. Terry Work is a fellow member of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry.
www.AAID-Implant.org

If you would like to know more about the implant systems Dr. Terry Work uses please follow the links below.
www.NobelSmile.us
www.riemserdental.com