We consider it a must that our clinical team is staffed with our maxillofacial surgeon. He can address those slightly more complex cases that call for his technical and surgical skills.
His know-how in the field includes:
Complex dental extractions or extractions of compromised teeth, with minimal trauma and conditioning the area for optimum healing, which will later allow for the placing of an implant with much better predictability.
In anatomy of the shoulders other cases, alveolar regeneration might be necessary. This prevents the walls from collapsing and allows for a more mineralised bone to regenerate so that it can provide proper hold, thus enabling the patient to resort to implants.
Extraction of impacted canines and wisdom teeth.
Fenestrations in orthodontics.
Frenectomies, through very simple techniques like Z-plasty, which avoids future problems, and that are often ancillary to an orthodontic treatment.
Complex implants with bone regeneration, where the available bone is scarce and it is desirable to obtain an augmentation of the bone ridge volume. Through expansion techniques and the use of filler materials, these cases can be corrected with total success. These are simple procedures, where the most important factors, once a diagnosis has been performed and a treatment proposed, are the skills of the surgeon and the regenerative materials to be used.
Searching for the ideal filler material that will substitute the bone, has been one the biggest challenges in the field. We increasingly hear about bone fillers, and the characteristics that such regenerative material should have. The main objective is that these materials have certain properties, mainly the capacity to be osteoinductive and osteoconductive. This means that the material inserted should form a web that is adequate for the body to convert into its own bone. In addition, such bone should be of good quality and have a correct degree of mineralisation.
Apicoectomies
This is the surgical treatment of apical infections, i.e. lesions that are found at the root end (apex) of a tooth and cause discomfort and compromise the teeth. Through this procedure the tip of the root is removed together with the infected tissue surrounding it. It is a treatment that is offered as a last resort in order to save a tooth, provided that the prognosis of said tooth allows it. In order to evaluate this, proper clinical and x-ray assessment is necessary, as well as determining whether a correct root canal therapy had been previously performed on the tooth.
Sinus lift
Maxillary sinuses are hollow cavities in the bones of the face that make for a lighter craniofacial skeleton.
Often, when there are teeth missing, due to a pressure differential, the maxillary sinus floor descends and the space left for placing implants is not sufficient.
In other cases, the amount of bone the patient lost in the those back areas is so important that an implant simply cannot be used due to that very lack of bone depth.
Lifting the maxillary sinus is an additional technique of the maxillofacial surgeon, carried out to elevate the floor of this cavity and regenerating the area with bone filler. We usually apply a combination of autologous bone and artificial bone and, case permitting, we place the implant during the same intervention.
Nowadays, a sinus lift is a routine procedure, with very good prognosis and highly important for the patient to recover chewing functions in the back of the mouth.