What Is the Bone Grafting Procedure? What You Need to Know
Repairing bones after severe fractures or when they don’t heal correctly requires bone grafting. Grafting also helps fuse to neighbor bones when treating chronic pain. Bone grafting has different techniques, including allograft, autograft, and synthetic bone grafts.
What Precisely Is Bone Grafting?
Bone grafting is a surgical procedure to promote the natural bone-making process of your body by applying substances to spaces in weak, broken, or deficient bones for support. The procedure also helps stimulate tissue growth to close gaps or restore the strength of the bone and rigidity.
Who Needs Bone Grafts?
The bone grafting procedure becomes necessary if your bones don’t heal correctly after a fracture causing you to experience delayed bone healing because bone fusion occurs more slowly than expected. Conversely, bone grafting becomes essential if your bones don’t heal in an optimal position or when bone fusion doesn’t happen.
Alternative reasons for needing a bone graft might include bone diseases such as osteonecrosis or cancer, osteomyelitis, genetic anomalies such as uneven limbs or a tiny chin, dental bone graft if needing dental implants, joint replacement surgery, spinal fusion, and trauma with severe fractures shattering your bones.
How Does bone Grafting work?
When you schedule an appointment to receive bone grafting in Bronxville, NY, to augment bone in your jaw, you receive anesthesia to temporarily block pain impulses or even put you to sleep.
The dentist in Bronxville makes incisions in your skin to access the bone requiring grafting:
- The dentist cleans the bone to remove affected tissue to prepare it for grafting.
- The grafting material is applied to the affected area and secured in place using surgical techniques that might include hardware like plates or screws.
- The surgeon stitches the incision to close it.
When you receive bone grafting procedures from the dentist near you, the professional applies bone tissue from your body or synthetic substances to repair damaged bone. The dentist selects the grafting technique best suited for your situation. However, the procedure ensures your new bones remain strong and healthy for years.
The bone grafting material fuses with your natural bone, and the procedure might require several weeks or months to augment bone in your jaw to provide benefits like having dental implants for missing teeth.
How successful are bone grafts?
Generally, recovery from bone grafts is uncomplicated. The procedure is highly successful and requires you to follow your dentist’s instructions to ensure you don’t confront complications. During your initial evaluation for this surgical procedure, the dentist recommends you help yourself increase the likelihood of successful recovery from the surgery by quitting smoking or using tobacco. The chemicals in tobacco hinder your healing and increase the chances of infection, nerve damage, and rejection of the bone graft.
How Long Does Bone Grafting Take to Heal?
The recovery from bone grafting surgery depends on the size and location of the procedure, besides your physical health status and age. However, you can expect to recover and a few weeks or even a year if you require intensive processes to augment extensive bone loss in your jaw and follow your dentist’s aftercare instructions diligently during your recovery.
You receive instructions to change the dressing on the surgical site after 24 hours and prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers to prevent infections and alleviate any discomfort you experience. The dentist recommends not to eat hard and crunchy foods during your recovery and have a bland diet of soft foods during the days after the surgical process. For the initial 48 hours, you can use ice packs on your cheeks to reduce swelling and avoid hot drinks or physical activity like contact sports that might pose a risk to the incision in your mouth. Your jaw will likely feel normal after a few weeks, but it requires a few months before the grafting procedure strengthens your jawbone to prepare you to receive dental implants.
When to Contact Your Dentist after Getting a Bone Graft?
Contacting your dentist for follow-up appointments is a requirement you cannot ignore. Unfortunately, if you experience swelling, bleeding, and unusual drainage near the incision, numbness and tingling near the surgical site, fever, and pain that doesn’t subside even after receiving medications, you must seek help from the dental professional to alleviate the discomfort.
Rarely your recovery may not proceed as planned because of the situations described earlier. Therefore you must plan on scheduling regular appointments with your dentist until you have fully recovered from the bone grafting procedure.
Bronxville dentistry: Michael Aviel, DDS, performs bone grafting procedures on many patients seeking dental implants to replace missing teeth. If you encounter a similar situation, please do not hesitate to contact this practice to receive a successful bone graft and receive your dental implants after you recover.