What is a bone graft, and why might I need one?
Bone grafting is a surgical procedure that is intended to augment, or add bone to your jaw bone. This is most often performed in order to facilitate the placement of a dental implant.
A dental implant is essentially a titanium screw. Though implants come in many different shapes and sizes, all implants have a length and a diameter. If you picture a screw being inserted into a block of wood, you can understand that you would need a block of wood that is both tall enough and wide enough to accommodate a given size screw. The same is true for a dental implant being inserted into the jaw bone. If the jaw bone is deficient in either width or height, we may need to add bone in order to allow placement of a dental implant into the bony housing.
Depending on which jaw we are working on and which dimensions of bone you are missing, different techniques may be employed to add bone. Some of the most commonly utilized techniques include socket preservation, sinus lifts, particulate bone grafting, and block bone grafting.
Where does the bone come from?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions about bone grafting. The bone that we use will either come from a different site in your own body (autogenous bone graft) or, more commonly these days from a package or bottle. When bone comes from a bottle, it may be from highly processed human cadaver bone (allogeneic bone graft) or from an animal such as a cow (xenograft bone graft). The is chosen by the surgeon depending on your specific case.
Healing after bone graft surgery
Depending on which bone grafting procedure is performed, what site it is performed at, how large the bone graft is, and your specific health status, healing time varies. As a general guideline, healing time is at least 3 months, but may be as much as 6 months or even more in some cases.