Although dental implants have now been around for more than 30 years, they are still the latest generation of tooth replacements available and dental researchers continue to experiment with them and find ways to make them do more and be available to more people. At David Madruga, we use advanced dental implant technology in Marylebone to make dental implants work for people who have been told by other dentists that they can’t have dental implants.

How is your jawbone?

The success of dental implants depends very much on the state of your jawbone. Dental implants are a bit like rawl plugs in walls. They need something dense and solid to grip onto if they are going to give you the stability you need to chew with. Stick a rawl plug in a plasterboard wall and you won’t be able to hang a heavy mirror on it. Put it into a brick wall and you will. The same goes for jawbones, which can become thin and spongey and no good at all for supporting dental implants. But we have ways round that.

Guided bone regeneration and bone grafting

These are ways to rebuild lost bone tissue. We can insert new bone tissue, either from somewhere else in your body or another source, into the jawbone. It needs some time to integrate with your existing bone tissue. This gives you back the shape of your jaw as well as something to anchor dental implants into.

Plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF)

This is when we use some of your blood to create a liquid that will help you heal more quickly. We take some of your blood, spin it in a centrifuge and fractioning process to create PRGF. We will use the PRGF either as a liquid, or as a gel or a membrane around your implant so that the integration process can happen more quickly and effectively. This is a great treatment if healing might be a problem for you, such as if you have diabetes or bone loss. It is also a natural antibiotic and a painkiller, so the post-operative period is easier to go through.