When you have periodontal disease and the issue reaches a more advanced state, this could mean gum recession. As your gums pull away from the teeth, this alters your smile’s appearance and could leave you vulnerable to other oral health complications. In today’s blog, your Cerritos, CA, dentist talks about correcting receding gums with gum grafts.
What Causes Your Gums to Recede
How does periodontal disease lead to gum recession? When you develop inflammation and periodontal disease in the early stages and treatment isn’t provided to manage it, the issue will grow in severity with time. Eventually, this could cause the tissues to pull back from the teeth. The teeth appear long and uneven. This recession changes the appearance of your smile and increases the risk of periodontitis, the advanced stage of the disease is linked to adult tooth loss. The recession also exposes sensitive portions of the roots not protected by enamel, which means they are vulnerable to tooth decay or infection, causing further pain and risking the stability of your smile.
Starting with a Deep Cleaning
How do we treat your receding gums? Before we start the grafting process, we need to better manage the disease to protect your smile’s stability and the new results that grafting will provide. With a deep cleaning, we will remove harmful plaque and tartar from the teeth, roots, and from beneath the tissues. This could take one visit or possibly several, depending on the severity of your buildup. We then polish the teeth. This means we can manage the disease itself with preventive approaches, such as routine cleanings every three to four months.
The Gum Grafting Process
For most, we will conduct a connective tissue grafting, in which we make a flap of tissue in the roof of the mouth and gently remove tissue from under it, and use this to cover the exposed area of the teeth, stitching it in place. We also have the free gingival system, in which we take tissue from the palate directly and instead of from under a flap. Finally, we could prescribe the pedicle system. This involves taking tissue from the gums near the receded area, and is recommended for people who have plenty of tissues in the area. We then pull this over the exposed roots and sew it into place.
If you have any questions about how we treat gum recession or how we correct it with gum grafting, or if you have sore and bleeding gums that need attention, then please reach out to our team today to learn more about possible solutions!
TALK TO OUR TEAM ABOUT PERIODONTAL GRAFTING
To schedule a consultation and correct your receding gum tissues, then make an appointment with Cerritos Dental Surgery in California call 562-584-4082 today.
