Easy Dental Life Hacks To Prevent Your Own Tooth Loss

Dental implants offer superior comfort with a natural look and feel. But dental implants also require you to have decent jawbone health or else the bone-supported root won't heal properly and the implant could fail. If you don't naturally have the jawbone health required, there are a few bone surgeries your family dentist can perform to get you ready for implant success.

Here are three bone surgeries that can help prep your mouth for dental implant success. Discuss your personalized treatment plan in more detail with your family dentist, cosmetic dentist, and oral surgeon.

Bone Graft

Jawbone density deteriorates once a natural tooth is lost because the tooth roots stimulated bone growth and health. The deterioration worsens the longer the area is free of that stimulation. Your dentist can get the bone back to its former health using a bone graft surgery.

For the bone graft, the dentist will start with donor bone taken from elsewhere in your bone or from a synesthetic or bovine source. The bone is inserted into the weakened areas of jaw. After a healing period, the donor and original bone will have fused together as one healthy piece ready for a dental implant.

Sinus Lift

Lost teeth on the upper jaw pose an additional challenge that is still fixable with a bone graft. The sinus cavity above the upper jaw can slide down if the bone gives way, which can put the delicate cavity at risk of damage and your dental implant hopes on the backburner.

But the dentist can reach in there, lift up the cavity, then insert donor bone to prop the sinus up. The healed graft will keep the sinus in place so the slippage can't happen again.

Ridge Modification

Ridge modification is a more intensive version of the bone graft aimed at building up the thickness of the jawbone ridge, which is the curved top part that supports the teeth and traditional full denture plates. The ridge can wear away due to decay, friction from dentures, or some people are simply born with narrow ridges.

The bone graft for the ridge works similarly to the other types but a ridge modification requires more bone and more time for both the procedure and the healing. The procedure can as much double the amount of treatment time as needed for a standard dental implant. But an implant, and likely a regular denture plate, won't be an option unless the dentist fixes the problem.

To learn more about dental implants, contact a clinic like Pike Dentistry.