Advanced gum disease can also eat away at your jawbone, causing bone loss and ultimately leading to tooth loss.
Advanced periodontal disease can affect the attachments in the lower jaw muscles, making the tissue sag, which can lead to a “witch's chin” or jowls.
In most cases, dental bone loss can be stopped. And with expert periodontal care, you can actually regenerate bone and reverse bone loss.
When teeth are missing, the alveolar bone, or the portion of the jawbone that anchors the teeth in the mouth, no longer receives the necessary stimulation, and begins to break down, or resorb. The body no longer uses or “needs” the jawbone, so it deteriorates and goes away.
Certain changes in your facial features and bite can indicate jawbone loss. When tissue volume decrease in your jaw, you may notice that your mouth seems to collapse into your face, your chin becomes more pointed, or wrinkles begin to form around the mouth.
If you ignore the symptoms of earlier stages of periodontal disease, you will shift into stage 4, which threatens a 50-90% chance of irreversible bone loss. Symptoms of this final stage include red, swollen gums that ooze pus, painful chewing, extreme cold sensitivity, severe bad breath, and loosened teeth.
If you have periodontitis, your teeth start moving in the mouth, making tooth loss a reality. However, if you receive gum disease treatment early, you can preserve your natural teeth and prevent the need to search for replacement options.
Dental bone grafts: If you have a lot of bone loss, your dentist or periodontist may recommend a bone graft. During this procedure, they'll place bone-grafting material in the areas where you've lost bone tissue. (The material may be your own bone, donated bone or a synthetic material.)
As it spreads beneath the gum line, the infection then targets your teeth and bone. As a result, your teeth can become loose and fall out, and your bone will begin to deteriorate. When a tooth's root is no longer there to stimulate the jawbone, changes in the facial shape can occur.
Although you might assume that gum disease only affects the gum tissue, this all-too-common condition can affect the appearance of your teeth, your jawline, and even your overall face shape. The longer your gum disease is left untreated, the more drastically the condition can alter your looks.
Ever seen someone without their dentures? Facial collapse causes this on a smaller scale, evidenced by wrinkles in the corners of the mouth, loss of lip support, and overall shortening of the face to give an “aged” appearance.
In some cases, it may be too late for gum grafting to save the gums. If your gums are severely damaged, receding so far back that they expose the tooth's root, or if there is significant bone loss from advanced gum disease, gum grafting may not be able to restore them to their healthy state.
The progression of periodontal disease is slow but steady. It only takes four days for plaque to reach its maximum extent, so you'll be able to physically see signs of gingivitis on day 5. Advanced stages of this disease can be seen in as little as a few weeks if you have not tried to reverse the gingivitis.
Is there a cure for gum disease? Unfortunately, because gum disease is caused by bacteria that is forming in your mouth daily, there is not a complete cure for the disease, only management with a combination of periodontal therapy and proper oral home care.
But the condition may get even worse if left untreated. They may experience receding gums, loosening teeth, or tooth loss when it progresses into severe periodontal disease. If you wonder if you can live with this disease, the answer is yes.
Stage 4 of periodontal disease is the point of no return. At this point, even scaling and root planning won't be enough to treat your teeth. A dentist will probably recommend surgery or laser therapy to clean out the gums' deep bacteria deposits. The worse your periodontitis gets, the more it's going to cost you.
Foods such as pickled vegetables, citrus fruits, black coffee, and tea can enhance inflammation, aggravate your condition, and slow down the effects of treatment.
Per CDC/AAP, severe periodontitis is defined as having 2 or more interproximal sites with clinical attachment loss (CAL) 6 mm or greater (not on the same tooth) and 1 or more interproximal sites with periodontal probing depth (PPD) 5 mm or greater.
The treatment for this stage of periodontal disease is deep root planing and scaling to remove all plaque deep under the gum line and along the teeth. You may also have laser treatment done to remove any diseased gum tissue, and you may be prescribed with an antibiotic to help fight the bacteria and infections.
Stage 3: Advanced Periodontitis
As the infection worsens, the pockets may also fill with pus. At this point your teeth might loosen or fall out. This stage of gum disease is irreversible, though dental implants (replacement teeth) are one option for people suffering from serious periodontitis.
Osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) is a rare but serious condition that causes bone cells in your jawbone to die and your jawbone to poke through an opening in your gums. Because blood can't reach the exposed area, more of the bone dies. Osteonecrosis is the medical term for bone death.
Patients who lose a part of their jaw—whether from injury, infection, disease, or as a side effect of cancer treatment—can have the missing jawbone replaced through reconstruction.
Your jawbone is similar; if there are no teeth, the jawbone shrinks. If you only have one or two teeth missing, you may not even notice the change, but if all or most of your teeth are missing, this can make your jawbone weak.
Gum veneers are used to cover unsightly gaps between teeth that have been subject to gingival and periodontal disease. Gum veneers are removable devices made of acrylic. The process can take a period of a few weeks to create.