To have successful dental implant treatment, you need to have the right amount of bone, in the right place.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and your dentist might say that you cannot have dental implant treatment because “you do not have enough bone”
The good news is that there is almost always something that can be done – but very few people have the knowledge or clinical skills to do this predictably.
Lets look at possible solutions for common problems.
Find out how much your treatment will cost and options you have
To have a dental implant placed, you need a certain amount of bone to surround the dental implant. Ideally 1mm all the way around the implant.
Once you have lost bone, especially the height of bone – it becomes extremely difficult to regenerate is. Unless you use a specific technique to rebuild the bone.
You may have been told that you need a bone graft from the hip, or maxillo-facial surgery – which can be scary!
The good news that it is possible to have regenerative surgery to rebuild the bone, without having to take more bone from other parts of your body. It does take some time, and it will take a minimum of 9 months for the new bone to become strong.
With this technique, you can rebuild up to 1cm of bone (which is a massive amount), and if you would like your own dentist to place the implant, this can be arranged.
With so many dental implants being placed around the world, some are likely to fail. This means that they may start getting recession or may need to be removed.
When an implant is removed it leaves a big crater in bone which does not fill in, like it would if you had a tooth removed. So this should be avoided if possible.
Using special laser technology or photodynamic therapy, it might be possible to stop recession around your dental implants.
If the dental implant has to be removed, then you may need to rebuild the bone using advanced techniques, as mentioned above.
When a tooth is removed, bone around the tooth will also be lost, and this can often be felt when you run your finger over the gum – your finger dips into the lost bone.
Often there is enough bone to place the implant, but the reduced bone causes a shadow, or a cosmetic issue.
Having a bone graft in these situations is usually overkill.
It is often possible to regenerate the lost volume by increasing the thickness of the gum, a quick procedure which is often carried out at the same time as having your dental implants placed.
If you have recession around an implant, then this might be a solution to rebuild the lost gum around the dental implant