What is Dental Bone Loss?
Dental bone loss most often occurs naturally after tooth loss. The jawbone is to some extent tied to the presence of the tooth. After its extraction, the defect first heals (6-8 weeks), but then resorption (loss) of bone occurs, both vertically and horizontally. Other causes may be periodontitis, bone loss due to trauma, or long-term bad dental treatment (inappropriate dentures or a bad prosthetic, for example). One of the basic conditions for the successful replacement of a tooth with an implant is a sufficient volume of jawbone at the implantation site. Sufficient bone tissue not only provides the implant with the stability necessary for its successful healing but is also very important for the natural appearance of the gums around the implant. The jawbone forms the basis of the gums, and if it is lacking, a satisfactory aesthetic result cannot be achieved.
Insufficient supply of jawbone at the implant site can have a number of causes. Some jawbone loss occurs after each tooth extraction. This is due to the fact that chewing pressure is no longer transmitted to the jaw in the given place, and therefore the bone is resorbed. Loss of bone can also be caused by unsparing tooth extraction when the surrounding tissues are bruised. Reliable destruction of the jawbone occurs with untreated periodontitis, it is an inflammatory disease of the tissues in the immediate vicinity of the tooth, inflammatory processes can also lead to a large loss of bone mass.
Periodontitis, popularly known as periodontitis, is, together with tooth decay, the most common cause of tooth loss and oral bone loss. At first, this disease manifests itself inconspicuously, it does not hurt, and people only start to deal with it at an advanced stage, when the gums bleed, the teeth become loose, the gap between the upper incisors increases or even the roots are exposed.
If the patient comes with such problems, saving the teeth may already be uncertain. That is why it is important to visit the dentist regularly for preventive examinations, who will examine the gums and the state of the tooth's supporting apparatus with a simple screening test - that is, they will perform a probe in the gum groove around the tooth. They will also take x-rays at certain intervals, on which they can see the state of the jawbone - in the case of periodontitis, they will observe the loss of the bone in which the teeth hold.
What precedes the problem?
About 600 to 1000 species of bacteria live in our mouths. They thrive mainly on the surface of the teeth and in places where the gums are adjacent to the teeth. They create a unique community that communicates with each other. For example, when a person is hungry, bacteria from the surface send a signal to bacteria in the lower layers that there is little food in the mouth. That is, food residues and dead cells from the mucous membranes. And they should therefore slow down their reproduction. Each of us can easily find out how fast bacteria multiply. Within six to twelve hours, a layer of white coating (plaque) of varying thickness, created by bacteria, forms on the surface of our teeth. Because we usually eat more than we should, and our diet usually contains a lot of carbohydrates, they thrive like never before, when people were often hungry or had to live very modestly.
If this plaque is not regularly and properly removed from the teeth, it can cause tooth decay and gingivitis, which is manifested by redness, swelling and subsequently bleeding gums. If we stop brushing our teeth, in about a week to ten days we will all have gingivitis. Gingivitis can occur even if you brush your teeth, but not thoroughly. It is enough that you repeatedly miss some places or do not thoroughly clean the gum line. However, the resulting inflammation does not mean that it is periodontitis, it is only talked about when the inflammation from the gum gets deeper into the tooth bed, where it destroys the delicate tissue anchoring the teeth in the jaw and begins to dissolve the bone.