Reasons Why You May Need Bone Grafting
Bone grafting procedures are surgical and beneficial to fix issues with your bones or joints. Bone grafting is advantageous to set bones damaged from trauma or problematic joints. The process helps growing bone around an implanted device like dental implants, total knee replacement where bone loss has occurred due to a fracture. Bone grafting fills the area where the bone is missing or helps provide structural stability.
Surgeons can find the bone used in the grafting procedure in our body or a donor. Synthetic sources are also used for bone grafting. The grafting procedure provides a framework where new living bones can develop if accepted by the body.
What Types of Bone Grafting Are Performed?
The two familiar types of bone grafting are:
Allograft using bone from a deceased donor or cadaver cleaned and stored in a tissue bank.
Autograft where the bone is taken from inside your body from areas like your hips, ribs, pelvis, or wrist.
The type of bone grafting you need will depend on the kind of injury your surgeon is repairing.
If you need bone grafting in your hip or knee, you will likely receive an allograft. Allografts are advantageous because no additional surgery is necessary to acquire the bone. The risks of infections are also reduced because other incisions for surgery aren’t needed. Allograft involves bone without living cells, minimizing the risk of rejection compared to organ transplants. As the transplanted bone does not have bone marrow, matching blood types between the donor and recipient is not required.
Why Is Bone Grafting Performed?
If your jawbone isn’t thick enough or is too soft and you need dental implant surgery, the dentist in Gillette, WY, recommends bone grafting near me before you undergo the procedure for dental implants. Bone grafting can take the pressure exerted by your mouth with the decisive chewing action. The general dentist in Gillette, WY, helps create a solid base for the implant with bone grafting.
As mentioned earlier, the materials used for bone grafting can come from a natural body graft or synthetic bone graft that can help provide support structures for new bone development. You can discuss which option will work best for your needs with bone grafting Gillette, WY, when recommended a bone graft.
Bone grafts are also helpful to fuse multiple or complex fractures that don’t heal well after treatment.
Regeneration helps to develop bone lost to disease, infection, or injury. This procedure involves using small amounts of bone in bone cavities or larger sections of bones.
Bone grafting helps bone heal around surgically implanted devices like dental implants, joint replacements, plates, and screws.
Preparing for Bone Grafting
Your doctor performs an entire medical history and physical exam before your surgery. You must tell your doctor about any medications, including over-the-counter drugs and supplements you take. Your doctor instructs you to fast before surgery to prevent complications while you are under anesthesia. You receive a complete set of instructions on the things you can or cannot do before and on the day of surgery. It is incredibly essential to follow the instructions.
The Bone Grafting Procedure
Your doctor decides which type of bone graft a suitable for you before your surgery. You receive general anesthesia monitored by an anesthesiologist until you recover from a deep sleep. Your surgeon makes incisions in the skin where the graft is necessary. The donated bone is shaped to fit into the opening. The graft is held in place using pins, plates, screws, wires, or cables. After the graft is securely in place, your surgeon closes the incision with sutures and dresses of the wound. Casts or splints are used to support the bone during the healing, although they are not always necessary.
Recovering from Bone Grafting
The size of the graft and other variables determine the time you need to recover from bone grafting. Generally, you may recover in a couple of weeks or may need more than a year. You must avoid any strenuous activity for as long as your surgeon suggests.
It is incredibly essential for you to avoid smoking after undergoing bone grafting. Smoking slows the healing procedure and development of new bone. Research is available to show bone graft failure is higher among smokers. Many surgeons refuse to perform elective bone grafting procedures on smokers.
Bone grafting sounds complicated but is a relatively standard procedure performed by dentists and periodontists. If you need to regenerate bone in your jaw, bone grafting is an excellent method to succeed in your goal.