1. Fight the Effects of Periodontal Disease
Periodontal disease is an infection in the mouth, specifically involving the teeth and gums. Gingivitis is another infection, usually caused by poor oral hygiene, that often leads to chronic bad breath and swollen, tender gums. Periodontitis is a form of periodontal disease that causes recession of the gum tissue around the teeth. Periodontitis can lead to root exposure and eventual tooth loss. Your periodontist can help stop this tooth loss with a procedure that uses some of your own tissue. He attaches this soft tissue to the gums and patches the exposed areas around each tooth by grafting the tissue to the gum. This halts the damage caused by the infection. Gums can also recede as a result of aggressive brushing with a hard bristled tooth brush.
2. Types of Soft Tissue Grafts
Your periodontist can choose from three different grafting procedures to help stop tooth loss due to receding gums. In a gingival graft, your periodontist removes a small section of tissue from the roof of your mouth and attaches it to the gums in the affected area. Some people with naturally small gums may elect for this procedure to increase their amount of gum tissue. When the roots of teeth are exposed, the most common treatment is a connective tissue graft. Here, your periodontist cuts a flap of skin from the roof of your mouth and removes tissue below the surface. He then sews the flap back into place and sews the removed tissue directly to the gum around the exposed root. A pedicle graft uses the gum tissue of a neighboring tooth to fix receding gums. Your periodontist can cut away part of the tissue and stretch it over the affected tooth to increase the amount of gum surrounding that particular tooth.
3. Keep Your Mouth Healthy
Care of your mouth after a soft tissue graft should include cleaning the mouth with antiseptic rinses and brushing and flossing the unaffected teeth as usual. Following a soft tissue graft, two wounds heal. The first is the wound on the roof of the mouth where your periodontist harvests the tissue, and the second is the site of the tissue attachment to the gums. You might experience slight discomfort after the procedure, most often compared to a burn from eating hot food.
4. Touching Up Your Gums
Your gums may require reshaping following a soft tissue graft. Once healed from the surgery, your gums may not look as natural as they should. Your periodontist can use a procedure called a gingivoplasty to reshape the gum. In this procedure, scalpels or lasers cut away any malformations to smooth the appearance of the gum-line. Gingivoplasty usually takes only a few minutes to complete.
5. It's a Win-Win
Patients who undergo soft tissue grafts usually don't experience any side effects. If you require gingivoplasty to improve the appearance of the graft, you may experience bleeding, or, very rarely, infection at the site of the procedure.
