What is a sinus lift
by Dental implants in Sugar Land
Posted on 06-11-2022 12:53 am
What is a sinus lift?
Many patients come to our office looking for dental implants. We evaluate to see if they're a candidate. Sometimes they're not a candidate right now and need what is called a bone graft, a sinus augmentation, or a sinus lift. So the next question is always, what is a bone graft?
Many times, people decline treatment because they don't fully understand what it is and have a fear because of the term, "sinus lift". To be honest, the sinus lift is probably the most successful bone grafting procedure that is done, despite the scary name. So a dental implant is a manmade root that is placed into the bone. This root is made out of titanium and is usually between three and a half millimeters to five millimeters wide.
We need adequate bone in order to place the implant. We need to have at least one millimeter around the implant. So that's five millimeters wide, and we need a millimeter on each side, and we need a width of about seven millimeters. Now, an x-ray won't necessarily tell us if you have enough width. Most common x-rays that every dental office has won't tell us the width. It might tell us the length, but not the width.
So the only way to determine the adequate width is something that's called a cone beam, CBCT, or CT scan of the jawbone. What we can do is look at this jaw from a different angle than normal and look at its actual width. A dental implant is a three-dimensional object, and a two-dimensional x-ray isn't going to give us enough information.
Many times, a molar tooth is missing, and so to place an implant in that area, we would need to add bone to make it long enough because the sinus has what is called pneumatized. Now, depending on how much bone is there, there are two different approaches that we can do with the sinus lift.
There's a crustal approach, and there's a lateral approach. The crustal approach is simple we make what's called the osteotomy, or the hole where we will place the implant, and place it in its normal position, but not as deep as we hope.
And then we can actually push the membrane up and tint it, or lift the membrane. We can add some bone particles or other materials into this space that then, we let heal. See, in some cases, we can place an implant at the same time as the lift itself.
And sometimes, we have to do it in two stages, meaning we place the bone, we let it heal, and then at a later date, we will then go back in and place the implant. Now, a lateral lift is when there is not that much bone there. We can't push from underneath. And so we have to make an incision on the side of the jawbone and then access the membrane and lift it out of the way.
At that point, we'll place particulates, or other materials so that we can then allow the jawbone to heal. Usually, on a procedure like this, we have to let it heal completely, which is usually about six to nine months. As with any dental implant treatment, time is the most misunderstood aspect of treatment. Quite often, we are looking at, rather than weeks, and with most dental treatment, we're looking at many, many months, and sometimes, a couple of years.