Facial Reconstructive Surgery: Sinus Lift

The stairs. Your car. The street. A hard roll. They are all out there...waiting to chip or break or knock out one of your teeth. And when it happens, more than likely you'll want to replace that tooth with a dental implant. Modern technology has made dentures obsolete; dentists today can create implants that are custom made for your mouth, gums and jawbone. A sinus lift, sometimes called a sinus augmentation, is a procedure used by periodontists before a dental implant to increase the amount of bone in the upper molar areas. Once the bone graft in the sinus floor has solidified and matured -- a 6-9 month process -- the dental implants can be put into place. Following a sinus lift, patients often report a horrible taste in the mouth, swollen and inflamed neck glands, and a low grade fever as common side effects of the procedure. A rapid loss of weight in the face -- the buccal fat pads, as they are called -- is not typically associated with the sinus lift.