Use it or lose it. Preserve your tooth sockets.
We’ve all seen what happens to people who have lost their teeth. The caved-in jaws and aged appearance. This occurs because once bone is lost, it is no longer subjected to daily use and stress. We all know that a weightlifter’s muscles shrink once he stops hitting the gym. That’s because the human body is programmed to reduce what it no longer uses—including jawbone.
Every tooth and its surrounding bone is subjected to the daily stress of chewing. Once the tooth is removed, so is that pounding stress, and the body resorbs the bone. The jaw begins to atrophy and lose its shape.
To prevent this, socket preservation can be done at the time of your extraction, filling the empty space where the tooth was. Various types of grafting material are used to preserve this space, until the implant can be placed. Without socket preservation, a 30 to 60% loss in bone volume occurs within six months, which may complicate or eliminate the option of future implant placement.
To learn more about how socket preservation helps pave the way for the implantation of permanent replace teeth, please contact Dr. Sayed to discuss socket grafting before having a tooth extraction.