Expert: Rafael Mosery,D.D.S. - 2/22/2007

Question
You said it acts as a scaffolding to which your own bone grows onto. You mean that having the implant in place will create more bone or just having the artificial bone will stimulate bone growth? Thanks again for the explanation.
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
I went for 3 implant consultations and all three dentists recommend synthetic bone for grafting. Has this become so successful over harvesting a patient's own bone that its become the favorite choice for dentists?
-----Answer-----
No.The gold standard is autogenous bone, however harvesting it is usually impractical for most cases.If you needed to build up height then a block graft would be harvested from the patient as the most ideal material.Ifyou have a bony defect or require a sinus graft most doctors would use irradiated cancellous or decalcified freeze dried bone mixed with HA.Both the irr.canc and dfdb are human bone but not from the patient.They've been used with great success for decades.I do not use synthetic bone. I was trained with the above mentioned products and have had excellent results using same.It should be noted that most grafts would work with the synthetic substitutes as well,THe biology is as follows.The graft is placed, it acts as a scaffolding to promote your own bone and gradually your own bone grows into this scaffolding(about 8 months).I hope I didn't confuse the issue more .It's really up to the individual doctor. Ask about success rates,practitioners tend to use whatever gives them theresults they're after-Success.

Answer
The graft and your own bone work together that's the idea.If you don't have enough bone to support the implant,that site requires the graft to generate a favorable amount of bone and THEN the implant is placed.If the deficiency is small,sometimes at the surgical visit of implant placement I would put the graft in as well.The implant is definately not going to generate any bone growth whatsoever.It's a graft to bone dynamic.