Bone Grafts

What is a Bone Graft?

The goal of periodontal therapy is to restore diseased tissue to a healthy state. For more advanced types of periodontal disease, a special type of gum surgery may be required in order to attempt to rebuild tissue that has been previously destroyed. This procedure is called periodontal regeneration.

Normally, during periodontal surgery, the gum tissue is opened to expose the damaged underlying bone support. If the damage is minor, the bone can be smoothed over much like a scratch in a piece of furniture can be sanded down. In that way, we create a smooth floor of bone to support the carpet of gum tissue and its seal of gum to tooth.

Unfortunately, in more advanced stages, the damage to the bone is so severe that smoothing it out becomes impossible. In these cases, we try to fill in the areas of bone destruction with new bone material. This material, made up of freeze-dried demineralized bone, provides a framework for your body to regenerate its lost bone support. Studies have shown that this material is highly effective in accomplishing this task. In addition, the grafted material completely vanishes in less than a year and is replaced by your body's own bone structure. The material that is used for the bone graft has an extraordinary safety record. This bone material has been used in modern periodontics for over 30 years, in millions of cases, with not one case where any infection has been transmitted.

Our bone material is obtained from the American Red Cross Tissue Bank. This freeze-dried demineralized allogenic bone material is obtained under sterile conditions from carefully-screened donors. Studies have shown that this material, in its freeze-dried form, has less than a one in eight million chance of transmitting any living particles (such as the hepatitis or AIDS viruses). In addition, the material is then pulverized and kept in alcohol for 30 minutes (it has been proven that the AIDS virus is killed in 10 minutes with the use of this technique). The material is then demineralized by immersion in a concentrated solution of hydochloric acid for three to eight hours (studies have shown that such a solution kills all viruses and microorganisms on contact!).