15 Jul Dental Implants After A Bone Graft: How long will I have to wait?
Bone grafting can help patients restore their smiles with dental implants even if they’ve suffered bone loss subsequent to their tooth loss. This does affect the anticipated treatment timeline, but it’s a worthwhile investment of your time to improve your chances of long-term dental implant success. It can also be helpful to understand why bone grafting may be recommended to boost your patience with the process.
Bone Grafting And The Treatment Timeline
Bone grafting involves a surgical procedure. The oral surgeon will harvest bone from a donor source, which may be other bone tissue from the patient’s body or bone from a cadaver or animal or synthetic source. That bone tissue is then inserted at the proposed implant site, and the donor tissue is gradually integrated into the patient’s jaw structure.
The expected duration of recovery following bone grafting will vary from patient to patient, and your oral surgeon can give you a better estimate of the anticipated timeline in your case after evaluating you. Typically patients should plan to wait at least a few months after the bone graft before proceeding with dental implant placement.
Why is bone grafting necessary?
In order for dental implants to “take,” the patient must have adequate bone tissue to support osseointegration, which is the process in which the jawbone material fuses with the titanium implant. That process gives the dental implant its permanent quality as a fixture in the patient’s jaw.
If there is not enough bone tissue present, then the dental implant may fail prematurely. At your initial consultation, the surgeon will assess the quality of bone at the implant site and determine whether bone grafting will enhance your chances of successful osseointegration of the dental implant.
Bone grafting can be instrumental in helping you gain the maximum benefit from your dental implants. To learn more about this aspect of your treatment, including the anticipated time it will add to your overall course of treatment, schedule a consultation at Commonwealth Oral & Facial Surgery.