The clinical and radiological outcomes of sinus augmentation procedures have been published in several studies. However, little data on the physical and psychological impact of this procedure on the patient is available yet. The present study evaluated pre-operative and post-treatment OHRQoL self-assessment scores of patients treated with dental implants after sinus augmentation procedures.

The one-year and five-year survival rates of the investigated implants were 95.4 and 94.4%. These results are in accordance with the recent literature. In a current meta-analysis, mean implant survival rates were 98.6 ± 2.6% for sinus augmentation procedures using bone substitute materials alone, 88.6 ± 4.1% for sinus augmentation procedures using bone substitute materials mixed with autologous bone, and 97.4 ± 2.2% for sinus augmentation procedures using autologous bone alone. The mean follow-up of the investigated studies was 39.7 ± 34.6 months with a range from 4 to 170 months. Corbella et al. showed in a recent systematic review a survival rate from 95.4 to 100% after 3-year follow-up for internal sinus lift and a survival rate from 75.57 to 100% for external sinus lift. Del-Fabbro et al. estimated a mean weighted cumulative implant survival at 1, 2, 3, and 5 years as 98.12, 97.40, 96.75, and 95.81%.

In the present study, OHRQoL after sinus augmentation was investigated using a modified version of the G-OHIP. The results showed significant better values for all three subcategories after the treatment, indicating a remarkable benefit for the patients. Concerning the influence of implant indication, edentulous patients showed the most distinct improvement after the procedure. So far, many studies have examined the quality of life in patients treated with dental implants. However, to our best knowledge, studies investigating quality of life after sinus augmentation are very rare. Mardinger et al. examined the patient’s perception of immediate post-operative recovery after sinus-floor augmentation.