When Is It Too Late for Gum Grafting? Timing Is Everything
If your dentist recommends gum grafting, you must seek the treatment as soon as possible. Gum grafting is a surgical procedure that helps restore the health of your gums, but if left untreated, the damage becomes extensive for a successful surgery.
Occasionally gum grafting does not help save your gums, especially if they are severely damaged and have receded to expose your tooth roots. In addition, if you have significant bone loss from advanced periodontal disease, gum grafting near me may not help to restore them to health. The optimal option in such situations is to remove the teeth and seek replacements with dental implants.
When Is Gum Grafting Needed?
You may need gum grafting if your gum tissue has receded from your teeth to expose more of the tooth and root cause of gum recession. You may have receding gums from periodontal disease, aggressive brushing, and other factors contributing to poor dental hygiene. Some factors that might contribute to gum recession include smoking, grinding your teeth when sleeping, trauma to your gums, a misaligned bite, and poor dental hygiene.
When Is It Too Late for Gum Grafting?
If you experience symptoms of gum disease, you must seek treatment from your dentist as soon as possible. However, when you notice minimal gum recession or bone loss in the early stages, gum graft surgery in Los Gatos can restore your gums to their original shape.
However, if you leave gum disease untreated or allow it to progress into the advanced stage, which causes significant bone loss, you may not benefit from a gum grafting procedure to restore the health of your gums. In such cases, you may require surgery for primary dental implants to replace your lost teeth instead of gum grafting.
How Can You Tell If You Need Gum Grafting?
As you see your teeth daily when brushing and flossing, you will notice receding gums exposing more of your teeth or making them appear elongated. These are tell-tale signs that you need a gum graft to preserve your gum health.
An excellent technique to determine whether you need gum grafting is to look at your pictures taken some years ago and compare your teeth with them. If your teeth appear elongated, your gums are likely receding to indicate you need a gum graft. Therefore if you notice receding gums, you must contact Los Gatos dentistry to discuss the gum grafting procedure with the dentist and decide to have it as soon as possible.
The Gum Grafting Procedure
Gum grafting is a minimally invasive procedure to restore the appearance of your gums after they sustain damage from gum disease. Gum grafting is performed for aesthetic and health reasons but improves the looks of your teeth and gums in both situations.
Los Gatos Dentistry performs gum grafting using connective tissue grafts and gingival grafts. In the former connective tissue from another part of the body, generally from the mouth roof, helps with the grafting. Gingival grafts use gum tissue from another part of your mouth. As mentioned earlier, the procedure is minimally invasive and requires about a week to recover without causing extensive complications.
Are There Any Alternatives to Gum Grafting?
Gum grafting does not have to be painful or complicated because dentistry advances now make available the pinhole surgical technique providing an alternative for gum grafting surgery using scalpels and sutures by replacing them with a tiny needle to create a pin-sized hole in your gums when performing the grafting. Your gums are gently lifted to glide over the receded area of the tooth. As no incisions are made in your gums or sutures inserted, you will not have to deal with the conventional side effects of surgery like bleeding, swelling, and pain. In addition, you may report the appearance of your gums has changed soon after the procedure.
Experience symptoms of gum disease, causing bleeding when brushing and flossing your teeth or painful chewing. You must see Los Gatos dentistry to receive treatment for the condition before your gums start receding. If you allow the infection to progress without treatment, you will require gum grafting procedures to restore the health of your gums and the appearance of your teeth. Therefore do not consider leaving gum disease untreated unless you want expensive surgery to restore your gum health.
If you experience gum recession, Mountain Bay Dental performs minimally invasive gum restoration by providing a gum graft. Arrange a meeting with them today to restore the health of your gums before the condition worsens to make you need dental implants.