What Is Site Preservation?
August 4, 2017
The ultimate goal of your dentist is to preserve your natural tooth. Prevention of damage and decay is the first line of preservation. Treatment and restoration can often be done to save a tooth if prevention did not work. However, there are times when decay, damage, or infection is so severe that there is no longer a viable way to save a tooth. A dental extraction may need to be done to protect the remaining teeth and your overall health. With the exception of your wisdom teeth, most extracted teeth will need to be replaced with some sort of prosthetic. To make sure that a tooth can safely be replaced, extraction site preservation may need to be done.
What Is Extraction Site Preservation?
To fortify the area where the missing tooth once was, your dentist can fill in the area with bone grafting or with a bio-compatible substitute. This can prevent bone loss in the jaw by stabilizing the site. It can provide a strong foundation for a dental replacement like a dental implant. Having a strong foundation will not only help for an implant, but it can also protect the teeth surrounding the extraction site. A jaw facing bone loss is unstable for all teeth.
Site Preservation Prevents Bone Loss
The roots and nerves of your tooth stimulate your jawbone. When a tooth and its roots are extracted, that stimulation is gone. Without that stimulation, your body begins to believe that the bone is no longer necessary and stops sending minerals and bloodflow to the area. Bone resorption can happen. Bone resorption is when your body starts to demineralize the bone to use the minerals somewhere else in the body. Over time, the jaw can soften and change shape causing a weak foundation for teeth and implants. Site preservation can keep bone resorption from happening.
Site Preservation May Be Needed if You Have Had an Extraction
When tooth extraction becomes necessary, you can still preserve your smile. To learn more, schedule an appointment by calling Cosmetic & Implant Dentistry of Kansas City, MO, today at 816-427-4018.