Dental implants are the modern solution to replacing missing or damaged teeth in a way that does not decrease your capacity to live as naturally as you would with perfect natural teeth. Implant surgery has become the procedure of choice in recent years while the acceptance of alloy root implants such as titanium roots has increased. While a basic implant procedure involves drilling and then inserting titanium roots into tooth spaces, followed by a crown being fitted to this root; the actual procedure may involve one or several additional processes, determined on an individual basis. These procedures are usually conducted to create an environment around the affected tooth which is more conducive to implantation or to align other factors which may affect the success potential for the implant and to avoid implant rejection. In the following paragraphs, we discuss the most important and commonly occurring procedure which complements an implant surgery plan.

Dental Bone Grafting

When a patient set to receive dental implants displays the lack of adequate maxillary or mandibular bone in the bone area where the implant is to be placed, a bone graft procedure is conducted. The need for this occurs because there must be sufficient existing bone all around the implant for it to integrate securely with the implant. In order for an implant to work, it must be integrated strongly enough with the bone so to be able to handle the stress which natural teeth can handle, for instance while biting or chewing food.
The bone tissue generally has the ability to regenerate if given the space and aligned in the right way. As native bone grows, it will generally replace the graft material completely, resulting in a fully integrated region of new bone (Wikipedia). An autograft procedure is usually conducted; in this procedure, fragments of bone from the same patient (from the hip or spare jawbone) are taken and grafted to the implantation areas which lack sufficient bone depth and volume. This is done as the likelihood of the bone graft being successful is much higher if the bone graft comes from the same patient. Other procedures include allograft, Xenograft and substitution with artificially produced bone-like substances such as Regeneform (calcium sulfate) and HA (hydroxyapatite), which also usually show good results.

Common Procedure for grafting

The procedure itself is simple enough. A 'flap' is cut into the gums so that the targeted area of the jawbone is fully exposed. The surgeon then places the graft material using several types of block and on-lay grafts, seals the graft area with an infection preventing membrane and then seals the incision, allowing the graft to heal over the course of weeks or even months if necessary. Antibiotic and antibacterial medication is used over the course of rehabilitation of the bone.

Reference list:

en [dot] wikipedia [dot] org/wiki/Bone_grafting
en [dot] wikipedia [dot] org/wiki/Dental_implant