jawbone

Replacing a lost tooth isn’t always a walk in the park. Sometimes, you don’t have enough bone in your upper jaw to support an implant. That’s where a sinus lift comes in.
Sinus lifts are thought to be the best available solution for people who don’t have enough bone to support a dental implant. Even better, the surgery has a low risk of complications, according to a study published in the Implantologie Journal. That being said, it’s still important to discuss potential sinus lift complications so that you are fully informed before you choose to get surgery.

What is a sinus lift?

A sinus lift is a type of surgery that adds more bone to your upper jaw, where your molars or premolars should be. It is also known as sinus augmentation. Your sinus membrane needs to be lifted in order to fit additional bone between your jaw and your maxillary sinuses, which is why it’s called a “sinus lift”. Your maxillary sinuses are the largest of your sinuses and are located under your eyes and above your teeth.

Sinus lift complications

Thankfully, serious complications in sinus lift procedures are very rare. Like any surgery though, there is some risk of complications, which include the following:

• Puncturing of the sinus membrane during surgery. This is by far the most common complication during a sinus lift. Your surgeon should be able to patch or stitch up the punctured membrane, which will repair it. If they can’t do this, they may stop the surgery and allow your membrane to heal before they redo the surgery.
• Sinus infection. Like with any surgery, there is a risk of infection. However, getting a sinus infection due to a sinus lift is very rare. It’s usually caused by an infection of the materials used during surgery.
• Wound drainage, also known as purulent exudate, may occur. You may know this type of drainage as pus. This isn’t a huge threat and can typically be taken care of with irrigation techniques and antibiotics.
• You may experience discoloration under your eyes due to a collection of blood building up after surgery. This is usually caused by damage to blood vessels during surgery or improper care of the patient’s mouth after surgery. Hematoma generally occurs in older women and should clear up after two weeks. It presents no danger - it’s only an aesthetic issue.
• Implant failure. On very rare occasions, your implant may not be able to connect with the bone material. This failure can also occur with your natural bone as well (without a sinus lift).

If you experience any of the following signs of sinus lift complications, you should contact your surgeon immediately:

• Swelling or pain increases or does not decrease after two days.
• A fever develops.
• Bone-like material moves after you sneeze or blow your nose.
• Bleeding continues after one or two days.
• Bleeding becomes bright red and flows at a constant pace.

How to reduce your risk of complications

Sinus lifts have a low risk of complications in general. As long as you’re healthy, choose a good surgeon, and take proper care of yourself, you typically shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
While some uncontrollable factors may cause sinus lift complications, there are some things you can do to reduce your risk. You should always choose a skilled and board-certified dental surgeon to perform your surgery. At Water Tower Dental Care, Dr. Daniel Aneszko and Dr. Rana Stino will refer you to a skilled, experienced and certified surgeon if you need a sinus lift. Experienced doctors should reduce your risk of infection and puncturing.
You also need to carefully follow your after-surgery care instructions. If you don’t properly care for your wound, you could run into infection, hematoma, or other problems.
Finally, keeping your mouth clean and avoiding smoking can greatly reduce your risk of developing issues post-surgery. Smoking in particular has been found to significantly increase the risk of dental implant failure.
Complications after a sinus lift are typically very low-risk. It would be rare for you to run into any serious problems after or during this surgery. If you would like to learn more about sinus lift surgery in Chicago, feel free to reach out to Chicago’s number one dentistry! We would be honored to put you on a path to a healthy, full smile.

Whether you’ve lost your front teeth due to an injury or an oral disease, dental implants can give you your full smile back again. Dental implants are the best solutions available for missing teeth. Not only do they look just like your natural teeth, but they also keep you from developing other serious oral issues that come with missing your front teeth. Let’s take a look at how exactly a dental implant can fix your front teeth now.

What’s Wrong With Having a Missing Front Tooth?

Missing one or both of your front teeth isn’t the best look in the world and you can’t really hide a missing front tooth. If that’s not enough to get you to fix your dental problem, there are other serious health issues that come along with missing a tooth as well.
If you don’t replace a missing tooth or teeth with an implant, and instead choose removable dentures or no fix at all, you may experience issues with eating, pain and jawbone loss. Since you’re missing a tooth, you will likely not be able to eat normally, and may experience pain from your exposed gum. Even more serious, you may lose jawbone volume. Implants are the only restorative dental solution that stops jawbone loss by allowing your bone to grow tightly around the implant.

How Exactly Do Dental Implants Help With Missing Front Teeth?

Dental implants help in a variety of ways. Here are just a few of the most common ways a dental implant can benefit your mouth if you’re missing a front tooth:

• They creating a replica of your missing tooth that looks and acts just like your natural teeth. Implants are strong, stable and last for a lifetime.
• While other treatments don’t fuse with your jawbone, osseointegration (fusing) occurs between your dental implants and your jawbone so that your bone tissue grows tightly around your implant.
• They provide you with a healthy and normal bite.
• Dental implants can’t develop cavities like normal teeth. But you still need to clean and take care of implants just like you would your natural teeth.

What’s the Dental Implant Procedure Like?

If you’re getting a front tooth implant at Water Tower Dental Care, you will typically be treated in our office and be placed under local anesthesia or another kind of sedation. The dental implant procedure typically occurs like this:

• First, your dentist will place a titanium post into your jawbone. This replaces to the tooth’s root.
• The post will fuse with your jawbone as your mouth heals, just like a root would. This keeps you from dealing with serious dental issues that occur with other treatments for missing teeth, like dentures. The osseointegration process could take weeks or even months.
• When your dentist sees that the osseointegration, or fusion, between your jawbone and the implant is successful, he or she will secure an abutment to the top of your dental implant. This abutment will connect the replacement tooth to the post.
• Finally, the replacement front tooth will be secured to the abutment, and you will have a full set of front teeth again.

If you have a missing front tooth, you should seriously consider dental implant surgery to prevent any further issues from occurring. Our dentists at Water Tower Dental Care are dental implant experts. Contact us today to find out more about how a dental implant can help your specific case of missing teeth!

Over the years, dental implant surgery has become better and better. In fact, the procedure currently has about a 95% success rate, according to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Still, like with any surgery, there are some problems that can occur. Thankfully, almost all of these problems are pretty rare and can be avoided with planning and proper care. Here are five of the most common problems with dental implants and how you can avoid them.

Dental Implants Don’t Properly Bond to Jawbone

One of the most common issues by far is that a dental implant won’t properly bond to the jawbone after surgery. Over the few months after your surgery, your dental implant should begin to securely connect with your jawbone. This process is technically known as osseointegration. If the implant falls out, is loose or too much bone loss occurs, then the implant has failed.
An implant may fail to bond to your jawbone for a variety of reasons, including the following. We will go into more details about the specific dental implant problems below throughout the rest of the article.

• The implant may have been placed in the wrong position
• You don’t have enough bone density or volume
• You have damaged structures around your implant
• Your implant gets cracked or fractured
• You receive a sudden blow or injury to your face
• You are a smoker

Infection

If you develop an infection caused by your dental implant, you may need to have it removed. Infections can be caused by bad hygiene during or after your implant surgery. This is why it’s very important to go to a practiced and proven periodontist or surgeon for your surgery. You also need to make sure to practice proper dental hygiene habits every day. Otherwise, you can easily develop an infection. If you have thin gums, are a smoker, or have diabetes, you may be at more risk of developing an infection.

Smoking

One of the top causes of implant failure that we see at Water Tower Dental Care is smoking. Though many smokers have successful implant surgeries, failure rates are significantly higher in smokers than nonsmokers. Smoking increases your chances of getting an infection, improper bonding between your jawbone and implant, and developing peri-implantitis, a destructive disease the causes inflammation around your gums and the bone surrounding your dental implant. Learn more about how smoking negatively impacts dental implants here.

Nerve Damage

Nerve damage after dental implant surgery can be caused by an inexperienced periodontist or dentist. If an implant is placed too close to your nerve, it can cause permanent or temporary nerve damage. This can lead to numbing, tingling, or chronic pain in your tongue, lips, gums, cheek or chin.

Sinus and Bone Density Issues

Some patients may have problems with dental implants because of their sinuses or jawbone. If sinuses are present when you’re getting an implant in the upper row of your teeth, you may develop an infection. Thankfully, this is an easy issue to fix. A dentist should be able to recognize a sinus issue easily, and it can be fixed with surgery. You should always let your dentist know if you have sinus problems before dental implant surgery.
A strong jawbone with enough volume is key to a successful dental implant. If your jawbone doesn’t have enough mass, a sinus lift or bone graft may be performed to improve bone density, volume and space. You need enough bone to support and bond with an implant.

Damage to Surrounding Tissues

Since your implant will penetrate your gums, it’s inevitable that tissue will be damaged when you receive dental implants. However, this damage typically heals quickly and without complications. If you notice excessive bleeding and pain during your first few days after surgery, or if the bleeding and pain continues after a few days, you should let your dentist know. There may be a problem.

Dental Implant Crack

At Water Tower Dental Care, we work with a titanium post and realistic dental crown to make up your dental implant. These dental implants are incredibly strong. But even so, the implants can be cracked or fractured if you are hit hard in the face or if you grind your teeth a lot over a long period of time. This is very rare, but it’s possible. Once the implant breaks, a new one will need to be inserted.
Interested in receiving a dental implant? Contact Water Tower Dental Care today! We work with talented and skilled periodontists to ensure you’re getting the best service possible.