Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
One of the biggest challenges in replacing missing teeth is that often the residual extraction site loses bone support. Since a dental implant requires a good bone foundation for placement, final treatment is often delayed in favor of bone grafting to augment the jaw in that area.
The challenge here then is this: Where does that bone come from? In years past, people have had bone taken from their jaw, chin, hip or even leg bones to place into the defective area. The graft site usually heals great, but the donor site can remain painful for several months.
Another source would be cadaver bone, but there still exists some level of paranoia in the population of transmitting a disease or some personality quirk from the donating dead body. You can then see why people are even less excited about using cow bone.
Medtronic found a solution to this, utilizing your body’s own cells to re-grow bone in the affected area. They use a recombinant hybrid form of Bone Morphogenetic Protein, or BMP. The BMP tells bone-creating cells to grow in that particular spot. No donor site is needed, but the material is very cost prohibitive. To augment an area of about two teeth costs around $2000… just for the material.
A bunch of really smart people at the Institute of Science and Technology for Ceramics have found a way around all of this. Essentially, they take rattan wood and expose it to cycles of heat and pressure. During this time, calcium and phosphate is added to the mix. At this point, the wood is like a bone block, and can be attached in whatever necessary shape to real bone. Under a microscope, the wood looks very similar to real bone. The body’s cells then infiltrate the material and eventually it fuses with the natural bone.
They say this is still at least five years away. But if we can eliminate a donor site, and have the price be set at a reasonable level, this could be a glance to the future.
Check out the BBC report below: