When missing teeth due to gum disease weakens your jaw, this could prevent you from being able to receive dental implants. But our team can rebuild these weakened portions so your smile is implant-ready! In today’s blog, your Encinitas/San Diego, CA, periodontist talks about how we use lasts to assist with jawbone grafting.
How Jawbones Lose Mass and Density
The body will notice when you lose your natural teeth. Once it registers a missing tooth, the body stops the flow of calcium and phosphorus to the jaw around the lost roots. Without these regular doses of nutrients, the bone tissue begins to break down. This weakens the smile and increases the risk of further tooth loss and a prematurely aged appearance. This also means you may not have enough structure to support dental implants, limiting your tooth replacement options. Once our team manages the disease with periodontal treatment, we will move forward with bone grafting to rebuild and strengthen the weakened parts of your lower jaw.
The Ridge Augmentation Process
To begin, our team will take detailed digital x-rays and images of your smile, so we can plan the treatment in detail. We then administer a local anesthetic and offer sedation to help you stay calm and comfortable throughout the procedure, so your experience is a positive one. We then apply new structure to the weakened parts of the jaw, taken from other parts of your body or from synthetic sources. This new structure bonds with the jaw and encourages new growth to strengthen the smile. You now have a base that can support dental implants! When the area heals, we can discuss placing one or more dental implants to provide a full smile. With regular periodontal maintenance, we can keep the disease in a manageable state, so your new teeth can last for decades to come, possibly a lifetime.
How We Assist With Dental Lasers
To make the procedure a more convenient one, our team could implement advanced dental lasers. With laser dentistry, we can reshape hard and soft tissues as part of the augmentation process, so your grafting can be done with greater precision and accuracy. The lasers target the area with precision and prevent the need for sutures and scalpels, so the area heals quicker and you can return to your normal routine much faster. If you have any questions about dental lasers and jawbone grafting, then contact our team today to learn more.
We’re Ready to Strengthen Your Smile
Our team wants to help you rebuild your smile and prepare them for the placement of dental implants! If you would like to find out more about rebuilding and restoring your smile, please call Dr. Kania’s laser periodontal office in Encinitas/San Diego, CA, at (760) 642-0711.