Have you lost a tooth and in correlation with that loss in bone and you’re wondering, can I get a dental implant? I’m Dr. Rachel Miro and I’m a dentist here at Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists, and today we’re going to talk about the things we can do to assure you can get an implant even with that bone loss.
Understanding Bone Loss and Its Causes
Whether you’ve been diagnosed with bone loss or you know that you have bone loss because you had an infection when you lost your tooth, or you’ve been missing a tooth for a really long time, so that bone just kind of started to fade away, we have ways to address it.
Diagnostic Tool: a CBCT
The main diagnostic tool these days is CBCT. A CBCT is a 3D image that you take before you get an implant. This really gives you a three-dimensional view of the area where we’re placing the implant. Sometimes, you might need a little bit more height in your bone, or you might need a little bit more width. Whatever it is, this diagnostic tool really allows us to see where you need the bone and how we can add it.
Solutions for Bone Loss
Bone Grafting for Initial Tooth Loss
Let’s talk about the different ways that we can add bone and build bone, depending on exactly what you need. A lot of times, if you’re just losing the tooth for the first time, what we do is a bone graft. A bone graft is usually filling the space where the tooth is being taken out with bone.
Ridge Expansion
One thing that happens when you lose teeth is you lose your ridge. The ridge is basically the width of where the tooth used to be. So what we need to do is expand this. There are lots of different tools that we can use to make sure that we widen the area where you’ve lost the bone. This helps because then we can place a bigger implant with more stability in the area.
Sinus Lift for Upper Jaw Bone Loss
One of the main concerns is when you lose bone around your sinus. Your sinuses are these little holes up here where you breathe in and out. A lot of times when you lose teeth on the top towards the back, your sinuses will start to fill into that space. What we do in this case is we actually add bone around the sinuses. This is called a sinus lift.
Advanced Options for Complex Cases
If you’re a patient that has tried a lot of things—you’ve had a sinus lift, you’ve had a bone graft, you’ve had your ridge expanded—and you still can’t seem to get enough bone, there are also options for you.
Angled or Shorter Implants
Here at Dental Implant Aesthetic Specialists, we try to give patients single-tooth replacements. That means sometimes if we need to use an angled implant to make sure we can get enough bone or a shorter implant, we do have those options available to our patients.
Conclusion
If you’ve lost bone or you think you’ve lost bone and you still want a dental implant, we’re here to help you. I’m Dr. Rachel Miro, a dentist here at Dental Implant and Aesthetic Specialists, and I’m here to help you watch your mouth.