What Causes Bone Loss?
Like other bones in your body, your jawbones can experience a loss in mass. Jawbone loss can occur for many reasons, the most common of which are oral diseases that lead to the loss of your teeth. Missing teeth can cause bone loss in the jaw and face through atrophy (weakening and shrinking of tissue), resulting in a change in facial structure. In most cases, this leads to premature aging of the region and changes in facial contours. Each of your teeth is made up of the crown (the white part that we can see) and the root (smaller and protected by the alveolar bone tissue and gums). When the support of the alveolar (jawbone) bone tissue decreases, we are dealing with bone loss. When people don't maintain good oral health habits, plaque and tartar build up at the base of the dental arch, causing an inflammatory process called periodontitis, which destroys the tissues and bones around the tooth over a sometimes very short period of time.
Without proper treatment, these problems can worsen, leading to tooth loss, gum recession, soft gums, and even bone breakdown. In periodontitis, bacteria slowly consume the jaw and the underlying ligaments that hold the tooth to the bone. The most common cause of oral bone loss is tooth loss, especially if those teeth are not replaced with a solid implant or other spacer.
It is also possible to have bone loss due to misalignment of the teeth, making hygiene difficult, leading to a build-up of food debris and increasing the chance of infection. It is worth remembering that diseases such as osteoporosis and diabetes and also aging are risk factors for dental bone loss. Part of the bone loss problem occurs because there are very few outward symptoms of it; the patient does not feel pain and therefore does not see a dentist until the loss is advanced.
Jawbone loss can occur anywhere. We distinguish vertical bone deficiency, when there is little bone in the axis of the implant (from bottom to top), and horizontal bone deficiency, i.e. to the sides. A vertical deficiency usually occurs in the back teeth of the upper jaw, where the jaw cavities are directly above the roots of the teeth. Horizontal bone deficiency is often found in the back teeth of the lower jaw, where the bone is too narrow. The loss of bone mass in the jawbones is either primary, occurring in old age, or secondary. Primary bone loss can occur due to deficiencies in your diet and other lifestyle choices that you make, and in some ways, is unavoidable as it is part of the aging process.
Secondary atrophy is most often caused by excessive dental plaque or gum diseases. It should be noted that after the removal of solid teeth, this underlying part also atrophies, or the formation of a scar is always associated with absorption; and this atrophy is the reason why dentists wait about 6 months after extracting a tooth before they can proceed to the fabrication of artificial teeth, because about that time is needed for complete atrophy and final scarring to occur, during which the bed completely disappears.