Bone Grafting

Some patients lack sufficient bone structure to support dental implants. In this case, Dr. Kilimitzoglou will perform a bone graft to rebuild the bone prior to dental implant surgery.

DR. JIMMY KILIMITZOGLOU: When we’re missing teeth for a long period of time what happens is the bone kind of melts away or resorbs and we don’t have enough bone to support an implant. In that case, we have to do some bone grafting and bone grafting essentially is adding some calcium mineral that allows our own blood to go into that area and it makes bone, your own bone. The analogy that I like to use is we have some undifferentiated cells in our blood stream; cells that don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. And we actually setup a bone training center and these immature cells they train to become bone cells and they create more bone. And then a few months later, we can actually go ahead and place an implant.