Are dental bone grafts painful?
It is fairly common for people who are considering a dental implant restoration to learn that they may need dental bone graft washington dc before the dental implants can be placed. This may sound daunting, but bone grafting is actually a routine and painless dental procedure with consistently good outcomes. Bone grafting is necessary when a patient doesn’t have a sufficient amount of healthy bone tissue in their jaw to support dental implants. Because dental implants bear the force of chewing, the strength of the jaw bone is important for the implants to succeed. People may have a deficient amount of natural bone tissue for a few reasons. Some deficiencies in the amount of healthy jaw bone may be caused by defects in development or by trauma or injury to the face. Sometimes the jawbone may lose density due to gum disease. Most commonly, the bone begins to reabsorb into the body when a natural tooth falls out or is removed; once the root of the tooth is gone, the bone begins to lose density and strength. A bone graft serves the purpose of replacing the supporting tissue that is necessary for a successful dental implant.
Even if you are seeking dental implant treatment shortly after the loss of a tooth, a bone graft may be needed; sometimes, for example, the tooth falls out because the socket is infected. More often, however, people do not seek dental implant treatment immediately, whether for financial or logistical reasons. In any case, for every day that the tooth is missing, a small bit of bone is reabsorbed back into the body and the jawbone becomes gradually thinner and weaker. The sole purpose of the alveolar bone, which is the bone in the jaw that holds the teeth in place, is to support the teeth. Once this job is taken away, the bone begins to atrophy. The jawbone is also strengthened, consistently, by the act of chewing; when a tooth is missing, that area of bone is no longer strengthened by chewing pressure.
In order to form a sturdy support for a dental restoration, a dental implant undergoes a process known as osseointegration. Osseointegration occurs when the implant fuses to the alveolar bone that surrounds it, essentially becoming one with the bone. This is why the dentist will wait before placing a permanent restoration onto an implant: to allow time for osseointegration. Of course, if there is no bone there to begin with, or if there is too little bone present, placing an implant can’t happen in the first place. Bone grafts build up the existing bone to allow it to support a dental implant.
There are many types of bone grafts. In a socket graft procedure, the most common type of bone graft, the dentist places a bit of human bone into the socket of the missing tooth, staving off the atrophy of the alveolar bone and preventing the socket from collapsing. Socket grafts usually require about 4-6 months before a dental implant can be placed. In a lateral ridge preservation graft procedure, a piece of human donor bone is used to increase the width of the jawbone, creating a stable support for a dental implant. In a block bone graft procedure, a small block of bone is harvested from elsewhere in the patient’s mouth and is held in place with titanium screws. This block graft may be necessary if there are sizable defects in the jawbone. Block grafts and lateral ridge preservation typically also take about 4-6 months to heal. The sinus lift graft procedure uses animal bone to create a scaffold that encourages human bone to grow; this procedure is done when an implant is needed in the upper jaw, which can be too weak to hold an implant on its own. A sinus lift procedure takes anywhere from 8 months to a year to fully heal.
All types of dental bone grafts are outpatient procedures that are performed while the patient is under sedation. This means that the procedure itself is simple and painless. As the graft heals, there may be minor discomfort at the beginning, but there should be no pain. Most patients receive a course of oral antibiotics after a bone grafting procedure, to prevent any possible infection. Once the graft has healed fully, the dentist will place your dental implant; this healing takes a different amount of time for everyone. The dentist must wait for the graft to fuse to the natural bone, which can take anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the type of graft, location in the mouth, overall health of the patient, and possibly other factors.