Treating Gum Recession

No matter the reason, hard brushing, genetics, lack of care or even bruxism(tooth grinding), once your gums begin to recede, if you do not take action to repair them you could be on your way to losing the teeth around the recession.  Gum recession plagues a large percentage of the population.  As a periodontist, I specialize in the care of your gums, including restoring gum recession.

Typically the best way to restore gum recession is to use tissue extracted from the roof of your mouth and then suture that tissue into the area that has receded.  This procedure is called gum grafting.  Gum grafting has a high success rate for my patients but can be a bit uncomfortable for them.  We also practice the gum grafting technique using tissue from other sources so as to not have to extract any tissue of the patients in order to alleviate some of the potential discomfort from additional sutures in the mouth.  Either technique works well, but recently we have discovered a new technique to restore gum recession.

Using Pinhole Surgical Technique

Dr. John Chao’s pinhole surgical technique has revolutionized how we look at repairing gum recession.  Utilizing this surgical procedure, a periodontist no longer has to suture any part of the oral cavity.  The technique starts only with a simple pinhole opening, hence its name, the pinhole surgical technique.  Because of this, the procedure is minimally invasive and has very little recovery time.  This makes the  patient approval rating for this procedure as high, if not higher, than any other treatment method for gum recession.

With similar success rates and the pinhole surgical technique having less recovery time and no sutures or cutting of the oral cavity, patients are choosing the pinhole technique.

This picture(shown on left), from the web site pinholesurgicaltechnique.com, demonstrates the difference between the pinhole technique and traditional gum grafting by showing the amount of sutures typically used in a large gum grafting procedure and the small pinhole used for the pinhole surgical technique.  If you have receding gums and are looking for a solution to repair them in the Columbus, OH area contact us at Stoner Periodontic Specialists for your initial consultation.