Chapter of Oral Surgery that talks about Bone Grafts.
We need to place bone where it doesn’t exist and remove it from where it isn’t needed or where we have too much. So in surgery, we either need to place bone grafts or we need to regularise, change the shape of or reduce the amount of bone.
Handling bone, be it cutting it, wearing it, drilling it, screwing it, physically manipulating it outside the body and relocating it from one place to another, requires a high level of anatomical, physiological, biological and genetic knowledge as well as training, expertise and technology, and the full involvement of an experienced surgical team to carry it out.
So bone grafts are not a myth and they work very well.
Then there’s all the information and counter-information about the origin of grafts, with a whole variety of origins, from a miraculous “little powder” to phenomenal membranes that you just have to add boiling water to and you’ve got soup… I recommend my blog post, which I’m sure will help to explain and demystify some concepts about bone grafts.
What type of bone is used? Artificial or from the patient?
The type of bone is chosen according to the surgery to be performed. It depends on the amount required, the location of the donor and recipient areas and the patient’s remaining bone.
We use artificial bone and we use autogenous bone (from the patient themselves).
What are bone grafts used for?
We use artificial bone as an osteoinductor, to give the patient’s bone time to grow and occupy a certain space, as well as to increase the amount of bone grafted so that we don’t have to collect such a large amount from the patient’s donor area.
We use autogenous bone (from the patient’s own bone) in jaw reconstruction situations, when the amount left over is not sufficient for us to be able to place implants correctly and precisely in order to have a predictable complex Oral Rehabilitation.
BONE GRAFTS – MYTH VS. REALITY
In this situation, I would like to draw attention not to the bone grafts themselves, because they do exist, but to those who advertise and sell them, in which everything is a graft…
