A sinus lift is a surgical procedure that involves adding bone to the upper jaw, usually in the area of the molars Patients often need a sinus lift in order to make room in their mouth for dental implants. Sometimes called a sinus augmentation, this procedure adds bone between the upper jaw and the maxillary sinuses, underneath your sinus cavities, which are located on either side of your nose. When this bone is added, your sinus cavity must be moved upward to make sure that your jaw and sinuses aren’t too close together.
There are many reasons you may need to have bone added to your upper jaw. Some of the cases where you would need a sinus lift include:
The first step in this procedure is to get the bone that will be used for the graft. This can come from the patient’s body, from a cadaver, or from cow bone. All of these options are good sources. We also take X-rays and CT scans to study the anatomy of the patient’s jaw and sinuses. This gives us an idea of how much new bone we need, in effect how much we’ll want to “lift” the sinus.
To start the procedure, we make an incision into the gum where the implant is planned. This exposes the jawbone. Then a moveable flap is cut through the jawbone into the sinus cavity. This flap is pressed gently upward into the sinus cavity, “lifting” the sinus membrane. This “lift” now has created empty space in the bottom of the sinus cavity that can be filled with bone graft material. To be sure enough mass is added, usually, several millimeters of bone is added above the jaw.
Once the bone graft material is in place, the gum tissue is closed with stitches. This ends the procedure. Now the bone graft has to get to work building the new jawbone mass. After between four and nine months, the bone graft will have fully meshed and become a part of the jawbone. Now there is sufficient mass to place the implant.
