Osseous Surgery
Saving Your Teeth and Smile with Osseous Surgery
Osseous (or bone) surgery is a type of surgical procedure that involves reshaping the jawbone around the teeth under the gum. Although periodontal infection can damage your gums which you can see, most of the damage from periodontal disease actually affects the underlying bone which you can not see. As harmful bacteria, plaque and calculus develop under the gums and around the teeth, deep gum pockets can form as the loss of gum attachment to the roots of the teeth and loss of bone around the teeth occur.
Once the bone contour is damaged, the resulting irregular bone contours will prevent the gums from lying down flat or as close to the bone as possible, resulting in deeper gum pocket depths which can lead to problems for the health of your teeth. Also, if too much bone is lost, teeth may become loose and need to be extracted.
Osseous Surgery
One goal of periodontal treatment is to reduce the gum pocket depths so as to make future periodontal maintenance treatments like scaling easier to accomplish with better results. This goal means a reduction in the risk of future gum and bone loss due to periodontal disease. Infected gum tissue is removed and uneven bone tissue is reshaped.
Reshaping irregular bone with osseous surgery allows the gum tissue to heal closer to the bone in the areas around the teeth reducing the gum pocket depths and reducing the risk of future further bone and tissue loss around the teeth.
During osseous surgery, our periodontists will carefully fold back the gum tissue, remove the disease-causing bacteria and calculus from around the roots of your teeth, reshape the irregular bone surfaces, and reposition the gum tissue.
