Increasing the odds that your patients accept a bone graft is the first step to increasing the odds your patient returns to place an implant. When a patient invests in a bone graft, they have made the decision to have the best possible therapy. At that point, they are determined to follow through with the implant. Why is it that when some patients are presented with a treatment plan that includes an extraction, bone graft, and implant, they never follow through or simply disappear?
The More Bone Grafts You Place, The More Implants You Place.
A recent study sheds light on why patients will or will not proceed with therapy. The study looked at patient responses regarding the type of bone graft material that was being advised for use. The highest positive acceptance rate was for synthetic bone grafts with 98% reporting they would have no problem with this type of graft material. 97% of patients had a positive response to having an autograft. However, when offered an allograft, “41% declared that they would never accept this type of bone graft or would do so only as a last resort.”
If you are using cadaver bone grafts according to this study, a significant number of patients are not returning because they intuitively reject this type of graft material. Every healthcare professional knows that to motivate a patient to accept the best therapy requires a discussion on the merits of the therapy.
However, the more a patient knows about a cadaver bone graft, the less they want it, which blocks any effort to motivate the patient. On the other hand, when presenting a modern, scientifically proven synthetic bone graft, the more they know, the more they want therapy. In time, scientifically based synthetic bone grafts will completely replace cadaver tissues and maybe, for your practice the time is now.
Read the publication analyzing patient preference in bone grafts:
Fernández, R. F., Bucchi, C., Navarro, P., Beltrán, V., & Borie, E. (2015). Bone grafts utilized in dentistry: an analysis of patients’ preferences. BMC medical ethics, 16(1), 71. doi:10.1186/s12910-015-0044-6
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