How Can Guided Tissue Barriers and Bone Grafting Help My Case?

Guided tissue barriers, or guided regeneration of bone tissue, is a dental surgical procedure that uses barrier membranes to direct the growth of new bone and gum tissue at treatment sites with not enough bone or gum tissue for proper function, esthetics or prosthetic restoration.

These procedures are focused on development of hard tissues (bone) in addition to the soft tissues of the tooth that hold the tooth in the socket. At present, guided bone regeneration is applied to areas of the mouth to support new hard tissue growth on the jaw bone in order to allow stable placement of dental implants. Bone grafting used in conjunction with sound surgical technique, guided tissue barriers and tissue regeneration is a reliable and validated procedure.

Bone Grafting

Bone grafting is a surgical procedure that replaces missing bone in order to repair bone defects that would affect tooth healing or implant placement.

Bone generally has the ability to regenerate completely but requires a very small fracture space or some sort of scaffold to do so. Bone grafts may use bone harvested from the patient’s own body, often from the iliac crest, allograft (cadaveric bone usually obtained from a bone bank) or synthetic naturally occurring biocompatible substances that have similar mechanical properties to bone. Most bone grafts are expected to be reabsorbed and replaced as the natural bone heals over a few months’ time.