Sinus… Sinus is the air-filled sac area next to your nose also just below your brain. It warms up air you inhale and passes it through your lungs. When you lose your maxillary or upper teeth for an extensive amount of time, your sinus begins to drop and occupy the area where tooth was.
John came to me to replace one of his missing upper molars. He knew that if he kept ignoring the missing tooth something will happen. I will post some adverse effects of long-term missing teeth later. Unfortunately, as you can see in the first 4 pictures, he does not have enough bone to hold or support the implant, and the sinus has dropped to occupy the space of the missing tooth. If implants are place in these conditions, the implant may fall into sinus area, and cause some serious problems.
Your bone is the foundation for your implant to be placed into, and your implant is the root or the support of your crown. If the foundation is not good, it will fail. For this case, we did a sinus augmentation (sinus lift) to push the sinus air pocket up with some bone and placed extra bone to create the solid foundation for the implant. I always place 120% to 150% more bone than I need, to confirm I have solid foundation. The yellow marking on bottom picture shows the bone graft we did for John, and as you can see, the sinus has been slightly pushed up to ensure it will not be perforated during implant placement. This implant will last for a long time and replace his missing tooth.
