Most of us know that as we get older, we can get “long in the tooth”, meaning that we have receding gums. For most people it’s not truly painful, at least not at the start, and so we may be tempted to ignore the situation.
Unfortunately, receding gums are not taken as seriously as they should be, considering that they can be a clear indicator of gum disease. But the good news is that if caught early and treated properly, you can get back on track and enjoy healthy gum and bone tissue for the rest of your life.
There are many options we can provide to help prevent and treat gum disease, including gum graft therapy if needed. Our educational approach will help you make the right decision for your long term health.
What causes gum loss?
Often we’re told that receding gums are caused by over-enthusiastic brushing, and it’s true that this can be a contributor.
But more often it’s poor hygiene leading to periodontal disease, genetics (thin bone and gums), grinding the teeth (which can be treated with an oral appliance), and even piercings in the lips or mouth that can rub against the gums.
Types of gum grafting techniques
Typically we recommend gum grafts to our patients with receding gums, but there also needs to be a certain amount of bone to support the gum tissue. In other words, it’s important to treat the gum disease before we do the gum grafts.
There are different ways we can do gum grafts, depending on the location of the recession and your preferences.
Connective tissue graft
Providing excellent coverage and a seamless look to the gums, this type of graft is one of the most common techniques that we recommend for our patients.
For this type of graft, we make an incision in the roof of your mouth, collect tissue from the middle layer, and then suture the incision shut. Because we leave the surface of the roof of your mouth intact, this process has the advantage of being less painful and healing quickly.
Donor tissue technique
This procedure doesn’t require harvesting any of your own tissue, which makes recovery faster. We create a tunnel under your existing gums and slide the donor tissue underneath, and suture them in place. This option is a little bit more expensive than if we harvest the tissue from the roof of your mouth.
Free gingival grafting
This is a time-tested but more invasive type of graft, so we try to avoid this if we can. There is also a colour difference between the rest of your gum and the new tissue, even once they fuse.
In free gingival grafting, we collect tissue from the surface layer of the roof of your mouth and then stitch it to the gum site, typically on the lower front teeth or somewhere where the colour difference of the skin isn’t noticeable. One of the disadvantages of this procedure is that it is more painful and recovery takes longer.