For a dental implant to be successful if must be completely surrounded by bone. Over time the maxillary sinus expands with age. The maxillary sinus is an air encapsulation located underneath the eye and above the back teeth of the upper jaw. There are times due to its expansion that there is not enough bone for a proper size dental implant to be placed.

A sinus augmentation is a procedure which will add extra graft material into the sinus so that, there will be adequate bone for the implant. A good analogy for this would be a hard boiled egg.  When an egg is over boiled a liner is formed. When a sinus lift is performed an access is made through the shell and the liner is pushed away. This will form the space for the graft material.

A sinus augmentation generally takes 4-6 months of healing time. In certain instances the dental implant can be placed at the same time as the sinus augmentation.