Americans lose 30 million teeth every year to periodontal disease. In this process, plaque fosters bacteria that eat away gums, exposing the hard tissue of the jaws. As the bone in the jaws decays and recedes, the tooth starts to work loose afterwards. But some dentists are hopeful a new material known as HTR polymer can stop this process. What works for them in this case is gritting their patients’ teeth.
It has been nine years and there are several periodontists on the East Coast that continue to pack HTR polymer into the gaps that occur between the teeth and the diseased jaws. For this polymer, you will be dealing with tiny porous plastic beads coated with a calcium compound that become useful for preventing jaw deterioration where a tooth has been removed not to mention bolstering jaw ridges as denture anchors.
Plaster of Paris, human bones, animal bones, and all sorts of fillers have been tried out as mentioned by a New York periodontist. None of these are able to work as consistently as this one though. According to the new materials manufacturer, the product can save a lot of teeth, even millions of them, one company spokesman said. A number of experts still have their doubts when it comes to HTR in the same way as how they were skeptical when it came to various ceramics and metal pins that preceded it.
No jury is in play here the official of the American Dental Association’s council on materials and instruments mentioned. Nowadays, there is still no product that is able to stimulate bone growth. Out of 647 uses for the material, 634 of them are successful as discovered in a recent company backed survey of 64 dentists, periodontists, and oral surgeons.
During the attempt to save teeth loosened by periodontal disease, the failures happened. Even before the Food and Drug Administration approval was received in 1983, there were experimental uses for HTR courtesy of clinics in New York and the surrounding areas. Based from what the company said, the material has reached a 98 percent success rate in more than 4,000 uses worldwide.
Considering the results and the material itself, since these have not been forwarded to the dental association they have no official position. Hoping that the material will gain acceptance nationwide is the company. The material is biologically compatible, nonreabsorbable, hydrophilic or able to take up water, and negatively charged. In terms of the ideal grafting material, this is HTR.
Simple and mysterious is how he describes the workings of HTR. When it comes to the small granules, they act as a sort of scaffolding around which new bone material can collect and grow so these are injected in the corroded space around the tooth. Taking the material’s hydrophilic nature into consideration, it is able to attract wet bone marrow cells and the negative charge holds them there and stimulates growth. So that it is possible for the material to integrate with the bone, you need calcium.
He was once the head of dental research at a medical school in New York, and no longer willing to stop with teeth. HTR stands for hard tissue replacement, and he said he believes wherever there is need for that, HTR should work. What he said was that they already did a considerable amount of work on the spinal fusion and in the treatment of bone fractures. When it comes to HTR, as long as it is properly molded it can be used as a complete bone replacement.
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