Leesal,

The teeth that were lost in an accident years ago have resulted in severe bone loss in at least those areas of your jaw and most likely to some degree in areas surrounding those missing teeth. It is a natural process that the jaw losses bone when there is no longer a tooth to help maintain the structure of the bone. Over time as the bone deteriorates, bone grafting will not be successful in those areas which means dental implants will fail. You need to have adequate bone level, height and width to hold bone graft material. The graft material does not replace real bone, it stimulates and encourages new bone to grow into it providing that it is placed in healthy, bloody bone. As in your case when the grafting was done, the graft just sat on top of the bone because the bone was too flat to hold it so no integration took place.

The bonding and other dentistry that the other dentist did was to help open your bite and relieve some pressure off of the TMJ and hopefully give you a new bite. Obviously this did not work which is often the case. The decay that occurred in that short period of time could have been caused by poor oral hygiene and ill fitting dentistry. It also sounds to me like the TMJ was injured int the accident, yes? If so, what is the status of the injury or damage to the TMJ at this point?

I am surprised that you would consider bone grafting again given the trauma you have had to your jaw with the accident, the rampant decay, the extractions, the failed oral surgery for bone grafting and implants along with the severity of the infections. That is a lot to put yourself through one time never mind again.

I would suggest that you ask your dentist what he means by a permanent denture and discuss that option with him thoroughly.