Many patients find the thought of bone graft placement daunting. It need not be. As with any other surgical procedure, your comfort throughout is of paramount importance to us.
Graft of bone is needed to make good for a defect that might otherwise interfere with cosmetics, function, or success of another intervention. An example might be insufficiency of bone of the lower jaw to allow for wearing of a comfortable denture. In fact with enough loss of bone there can be pressure from the denture onto the nerve endings that exit the bone of the jaw (and are usually well away) to become pressed on. Pain or numbness could ensue.
The gold standard is for removal of bone from one site in your own body and transferring it to a recipient site in the same host. Also it is ideal to replace like bone with like. An example may be grafting of lower jaw bone to top jaw as opposed to say hip bone. The choice of graft harvest site is by and large dependant on the defect size to be corrected as well as technical considerations and surgeon’s experience and choice.
It is possible to graft bone from a cadaveric or animal source or to use “bone substitutes” but there are some limitations. If you require a graft to be placed, Dr Younessi will discuss all the relevant factors with you in some length.