Patient Education Articles
These are the questions patients ask in the chair, written out with more room than a consultation allows. They are written here in the office, one or two a month.
Also here: before and after photographs from this office, frequently asked questions, and what patients say.
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Free Gingival Graft: Building Gum That Is Not There
A free gingival graft moves a small piece of the surface of the palate to a place where the gum is too thin or has run out altogether. Its job is to build a band of firm, attached tissue, not to cover an exposed root, and that distinction decides when it is the right operation. Follow-up out to twenty-five years shows the band it creates is durable, and that the gumline tends to creep back up the root over the years rather than down it.
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Donor Tissue or Your Own? Why Connective Tissue Grafts Remain the Standard for Gum Recession
A gum graft for recession can use connective tissue from your own palate or processed donor tissue (an allograft, acellular dermal matrix). Six months after surgery the two often look alike, and the 2018 Cochrane review found too little evidence to separate them. Over years, they diverge: grafts of your own tissue keep more root coverage, more thickness and more firm gum, the things that predict whether recession comes back. That is why consensus reviews still rank connective tissue first, and why donor tissue makes most sense where its advantages matter most.
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Block Bone Graft or Particulate Ridge Augmentation? Why Most Ridges No Longer Need a Block
When the jaw is too thin or too short for an implant, it can be rebuilt with a block of bone taken from the chin, the back of the jaw or the hip, or with bone granules held under a membrane (particulate ridge augmentation). For most ridges, the particulate approach now gains as much bone or more, with fewer complications and no second surgical site. Blocks gain about a millimeter more width in some reviews. Unprotected blocks can shrink substantially as they heal, and harvesting them leaves a second wound that can numb the chin or lip.
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Know Your Implant: Why the Brand Matters for the Next 20 Years
A dental implant is the first part of a system: every abutment, screw and crown that goes on it has to match its connection exactly, for as long as the implant lasts. More than 220 brands have been sold, many look alike on an X-ray, and studies find original parts fit better than look-alike ones. Knowing your implant's brand and model, keeping the record, and choosing a system with decades of research and a manufacturer likely to be supplying parts in 20 years all matter more than most patients are told.
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Penicillin Allergy and Dental Surgery: Why It Pays to Find Out If Yours Is Real
Amoxicillin is the first-choice antibiotic for implant and graft surgery: it is the drug the implant trials tested, and its safety record is excellent. About one in ten Americans carries a penicillin allergy label, yet fewer than one in twenty of them is truly allergic, and most allergies fade with time. A label that is wrong is not harmless. The alternatives carry real risks, and in dental studies patients labeled penicillin-allergic had several times the rate of implant failure and infection. A simple evaluation, often a supervised dose of amoxicillin, can settle the question before surgery.
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PRF: Using Your Own Blood to Heal Better After Dental Surgery
Platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) is a natural healing gel made in minutes from a small sample of the patient's own blood, with nothing added. Randomized trials show it improves the regeneration of gum and bone defects, reduces bone loss after extractions, cuts the rate of dry socket after wisdom teeth, and eases pain and healing where tissue is taken from the palate. It works best alongside a bone graft rather than in place of one, and on its own it has not been shown to add bone in sinus lifts. Because it is the patient's own tissue and inexpensive to prepare, it is worth asking your surgeon about.
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Bone Graft Materials for Dental Implants: Your Own Bone, Donor, Bovine or Synthetic
A bone graft for an implant can use the patient's own bone, processed human donor bone, processed bovine bone, or a synthetic mineral, often with PRF made from the patient's own blood. Cochrane reviews and meta-analyses find implant survival is similar whichever material is used. The choice turns on the size and shape of the defect, how long the graft needs to hold its shape, the patient's preferences, and whether a second surgical site is worth it.
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Is Emdogain Worth It? What the Evidence Shows
Emdogain is a gel of enamel proteins that a periodontist can apply to a cleaned root during gum surgery, to help regrow lost bone and attachment. In deep, narrow bone defects, trials show it adds about a millimeter of attachment on average over surgery alone, and makes a good result more likely. No trial has shown it saves more teeth on its own, and with some surgical techniques it adds little. Whether it is worth paying extra for depends on the shape of the defect, how important the tooth is, and the patient.
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Pocket Reduction Surgery: When You Need It and What to Expect
Pocket reduction surgery, also called osseous or flap surgery, is the usual next step when gum pockets are still 6 millimeters or deeper after a thorough deep cleaning. The gum is folded back so the roots can be cleaned directly, and the bone is reshaped or regrown, so the pocket heals shallow enough to keep clean. The European Federation of Periodontology's guideline reserves it for deep pockets left after non-surgical treatment, not for moderate ones. The main trade-off is that the gum sits lower afterward.
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Gingivectomy or Crown Lengthening? How to Tell Which You Need
A gingivectomy removes and reshapes gum. Crown lengthening does the same and, where it is needed, also moves the bone beneath the gum. Which one a tooth needs depends on where that bone sits, because gum tends to re-form at its natural height above the bone. When the bone is left too close, the gum creeps back over the tooth or stays inflamed around a crown. A plan for either procedure should start with a measurement of the bone.
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Choosing a Gum Graft Provider in Austin
A gum graft is a small operation with a long life, so the choice of who does it deserves an evening of checking. The things that matter are the training behind it, whether the office offers the graft your recession actually needs rather than the one it always does, photographs of its own cases, a consult that measures each tooth, and a written estimate before anything is scheduled.
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Peri-Implantitis Treatment: What the Evidence Shows
Peri-implantitis is treatable, and the treatment that works is less exotic than the advertising. The 2023 European guideline, built on thirteen systematic reviews, sets out a plain sequence: thorough cleaning, a re-check, surgery where it has not healed, and maintenance. Lasers, air polishing and routine antibiotics did not earn a place in it. Success by strict criteria is more modest than most patients are told, which is the best argument for treating early.
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How to Choose a Periodontist in Austin
Austin has a dozen or so periodontal practices, and most of them are good. Choosing between them comes down to five checks that take an evening: the credential, the board, the reviews read the right way, what the consult includes, and the answers to a few direct questions.
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LANAP and Laser Gum Surgery: What the Evidence Actually Shows
Laser gum treatment is marketed as a gentler, no-cut alternative to conventional periodontal surgery. Twenty-five years of studies say something narrower: lasers can help a little as an add-on, the differences are under a millimeter, and no well-controlled trial has shown a laser protocol beating conventional treatment. A patient choosing between the two deserves that picture, not a brochure.
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Do You Really Need a Deep Cleaning? An Honest Answer
A deep cleaning is the right treatment for a specific set of findings and the wrong treatment without them. The measurements that justify it are written in your chart, and you are entitled to see them.
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Am I a Candidate for a Dental Implant?
Most adults in reasonable health are candidates. The questions that actually decide it are whether there is enough bone or enough bone can be built, whether the gums are healthy, and whether anything in the medical history changes how the site will heal. Some answers are firm and some are judgment calls, and this page separates the two.
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How Long Does a Dental Implant Take, Start to Finish?
A single implant in a healed site usually runs three to six months from placement to the finished tooth. Add an extraction and a socket graft at the front of it and the whole arc is closer to six to nine months. This is the calendar stage by stage, with the variations that shorten it and the ones that stretch it.
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My Implant Hurts or Feels Loose. Can It Be Saved?
A loose crown and a loose implant feel much the same to the patient and could hardly be more different in what they mean. This explains how the two are told apart, what peri-implantitis is, and what can still be done at each stage.
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Does Periodontal Surgery Hurt? An Honest Answer
The fear of pain stops more people from treating gum disease than the treatment itself ever asks of them. Here is what is actually felt during periodontal surgery, what the first week is really like, and which procedures are harder than others.
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Guided Implant Surgery, and When It Actually Helps
A surgical guide is a printed template that directs the drill to the position planned on a 3D scan. It places implants measurably closer to plan than freehand. What it does not do is produce implants that survive longer or lose less bone, which is why it is used here where the margin for error is small rather than on every case.
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How Long Do Dental Implants Last?
Across studies with ten years or more of follow-up, implant survival sits around 95 percent. The crown on top has a shorter service life than the implant under it, and the leading cause of late failure is inflammation in the gum and bone around the implant, which is the part maintenance is designed to catch.
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Periodontitis Stages and Grades, Explained: Stage I to IV, Grade A to C
A periodontal diagnosis comes with a stage, a grade, and an extent. Each of the three answers a different question, and together they say more about what happens next than any single pocket depth does.
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What to Eat After Periodontal Surgery, Day by Day
Most of the diet advice patients are handed is a list of purees nobody wants to eat. This is a practical week of real food after periodontal surgery, plus the specific things to avoid and the reason each one matters.
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Bad Breath That Won't Go Away
Persistent bad breath usually comes from below the gumline, where no rinse reaches. Here is how to tell what is causing yours and what actually helps.
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Free Gingival Graft vs Connective Tissue Graft: Which One, and Why
Both grafts use tissue from the palate and both build gum, but they solve different problems. Knowing which one you are being offered, and why, makes the whole conversation easier.
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Gum Disease and Diabetes: Why Each Makes the Other Worse
Diabetes makes gum disease more likely and more severe, and gum disease makes blood sugar harder to control. Here is what the evidence supports, what it does not, and what to do about it.
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Gum Disease and the Rest of Your Health
Periodontitis is a chronic infection that puts a measurable inflammatory load on the body. The evidence connecting it to other conditions is strong for some and still developing for others. Here is what is established, what is only an association, and what it changes about your care.
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Receding Gums: What Causes It and What Actually Stops It
Recession is rarely one cause. Thin tissue, brushing, bite, orthodontics, and gum disease each play a part, and the fix depends on which ones apply to you.
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What Periodontal Maintenance Means, and Why It Alternates with Your Dentist
Gum disease is controlled, not cured. Maintenance is the part of treatment that keeps it controlled, and it is different from a cleaning in ways that matter.
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Sedation Options Explained: Nitrous, Oral, and IV
Three levels of sedation, three very different experiences. What each feels like from the chair, who it suits, and how the choice is made.
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Bleeding Gums: When It's Gum Disease and When It Isn't
Bleeding when you brush or floss is the most common reason patients call the office. Most of the time it is gingivitis or periodontitis. Sometimes it is something else. Here is how to tell.
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Can a Loose Tooth Be Saved?
An adult tooth that moves is alarming. Whether it can be kept depends on why it is loose and how much support is left, and that is often better news than patients expect.
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Dental Implant Infection: The Signs to Act On
Implants do not get cavities, but the gum and bone around them can get infected. Caught early it is treatable. Caught late it costs the implant. Here is what to watch for.
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Gum Graft Recovery, Day by Day: What It Is Really Like
The question every patient asks before a gum graft is what the recovery is actually like. Here is the honest version, day by day, from the periodontist who does them.
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Implant or Bridge for One Missing Tooth?
The most common question at a consult for one missing tooth. The answer depends on four things, and one of them is the teeth next door.
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What Happens at a Periodontal Consult
A referral to a periodontist is often a surprise. Here is exactly what the first visit involves, minute by minute, so nothing about it is a surprise too.
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Why Your Dentist Sent You to a Periodontist
A referral to a specialist can sound like bad news. Usually it means your dentist saw something specific and wants it handled by the person who does that one thing all day.
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