Compensation of deficient jawbones

                                    

Deficient jawbones are a mundane problem that dentists face everyday amongst the patients making visit to our dental offices.

Approximately 55% of adults suffer from this after tooth loss. With such a common occurrence, it’s highly important for the patients to know why this happens.

The first & foremost factor relates to the problem is “negligence towards the oral health”. Whenever teeth fall out, patients don’t search for the solution unless it causes any problem or discomfort in the future & hence negligence prevents patients from seeking the right treatment at the right time.

With the advanced modernization, dental implants are too becoming an advanced & effective treatment to restore a single or multiple missing teeth.

However, dental implants placement demands for vigilant evaluation & consideration for bone where implant is to be placed. Ensuring enough bone volume in height, width & depth at the implant site is a major concern. Placing an implant in the deficient bone is quite a challenge.

Without compensation of deficient jawbones, insertion of implant is a difficult procedure to perform.

To compensate for the bone loss, bone graft is added at the deficient site either at the time of implant placement or before, depending upon the situation in order to increase the bone volume. Deficient bone volume is replaced with patient’s own bone or artificial bone.

Bone grafting increases the strength of the bone & provides excellent stability to the dental implants.
 
Procedures for bone compensation vary for every different situation.

• It is usually noticed that after insertion of an implant few threads get exposed, since the bone is deficient & implant cannot be inserted more in order to avoid any trauma to the anatomical structures, bone graft along with membrane to secure the graft is added around the implant. This compensatory procedure is the easiest & common.

                               

• The maxillary sinuses tend to enlarge after teeth loss, which leads to deficient bone volume in the lateral region & makes it impossible to place dental implants without raising the sinus membrane & providing support to the implants.

In order to place an implant, the sinus membrane is lifted along with addition of artificial bones & patient’s own bone & hence makes it proficient enough for the placement of implants.

• In case of narrow thin ridges with adequate bone height or vice versa, it is imperative to increase the bone volume either via using artificial bone materials or placing patient’s own bone at the deficient site.

                               

                      Fig:1 Prior to bone procedure                Fig:2 Bone being grafted to sunken area

                                                       

                                         Fig:3 After bone grafting & implant placement

In many cases implant insertion & bone compensation cannot be performed simultaneously. In such cases, we first attempt the bone compensation procedures, wait for few months for bone to heal & then perform dental implant procedure, when bone is proficient enough to support an implant.

One can overcome this problem by being more concern towards the oral health, which means if someone loses their teeth, they should seek the treatment as soon as possible, as the keen concern for your oral health might help you to avoid these procedures.

By : Dr.Rajat Sachdeva