When we lose our natural teeth, the lack of roots could weaken the jawbone and even limit the ability for your smile to receive dental implants. Fortunately, our team of oral surgeons can rebuild and strengthen the jaw with ridge augmentation, also known as a jawbone grafting, and the sinus lift procedure. In today’s blog, your Santa Rosa, CA, oral and maxillofacial surgeons stalk about the grafting and sinus lift procedure.
The Loss of Your Jawbone’s Mass and Density
How does the loss of our teeth lead to an older appearance? The body regularly sends doses of calcium and phosphorus to the jawbone. These keep the bone structure intact and able to support teeth. But when we lose natural teeth, the area around the lost root no longer receives these nutrients. The bone tissue then begins to break down, which means a loss of mass and density that could cause further tooth loss and over time, a much older appearance. While dental implants can prevent the breakdown of the jaw, you may have lost too much structure to support them! Fortunately, we have a solution with ridge augmentation.
The Jawbone Grafting Procedure
Ridge augmentation, also known as jawbone grafting, is a procedure that helps strengthen the jaw and provide enough structure to support one or more dental implants. Our team will surgically apply structure to the lower jaw, taken from synthetic or donor sources, or from bone taken from other parts of your body. As the body resorbs these new tissues, this creates bone structure that strengthens the jaw and allows it to support one or more dental implants. Once the new implants are in place, this further protects the jaw as the body accepts them as natural tooth structure, which allows the flow of nutrients to resume.
Sinus Lifts
The ridge augmentation procedure we talked about above is used to strengthen the lower jaw. But what about the upper one? To strengthen the upper one, we will conduct a sinus lift, in which we essentially raise the sinus floor and add new material to the sinus floor, so it can support dental implants. You can then receive new teeth and preserve the overall beauty and structure of your face and jaw. If you have any questions about how our team can conduct oral surgery to strengthen the jaw and prepare smiles for the placement of dental implants, then contact our team today.
Learn More About Restoring Your Smile’s Strength in Santa Rosa, CA
We want to make sure people can support new and lifelike dental implants. To learn more about rebuilding your smile prior to placing new teeth, give us a call at Santa Rosa Oral Surgery at (707)545-4625 today!
