Hi. I'm Dr. David DiGiallorenzo at the Lanap and Implant Center. I'm just going to touch base briefly on bone grafting and what we do at the Lanap and Implant Center. Typically, we see a lot of patients who have either cracked or failing teeth, whether they've had root canal or they've just failed biomechanically as a result of stress or a trauma. When we remove teeth, one of the critical elements is to preserve the bony structure. Even if we're not going to be utilizing dental implants in the near term, we want to create a foundation which is going to give the patient options. Typically, when teeth have had root canal or are removed, there can be a lot of destruction of the bony housing of the lower jaw or the upper jaw. It becomes critically important to not only detoxify the jaw appropriately upon surgical intervention, but also it becomes critically important to set a foundation in which can receive orthopedic inserts, whether they be metal-free dental implants or titanium in the future.

Bone grafting is critically important to secure that foundation. The way we have approached bone grafting is to, as a primary source of regeneration, is to use platelet-derived growth factors. In our office, our assistants are trained phlebotomists. They take blood from the patient. We then spin the platelets. We isolate the growth factors, and then we mix these growth factors with different materials that are then introduced back into the mouth. This process ameliorates healing, reduces inflammation, reduces infection, and really helps the body to understand that these are like cells. When we do dental implants, we'll coat the implants in the patient's growth factors. When we place a bone graft, we'll utilize bone which is coated in these growth factors. This has been extremely therapeutically important for how we operate at the Lanap and Implant Center.