The authors concluded that in clinical decision-making regarding donor site for bone graft harvesting, patients and clinicians should consider expected decrease in HRQoL if deciding to use extra-oral donor sites. Therefore, the authors recommended to prefer intra-oral donor sites whenever possible. In a recent study of Nickenig et al., OHIP-G 21 was evaluated in 8689 patients with various kinds of indications (free end gap, posterior single-tooth gap, anterior single-tooth gap, dental gap, and edentulous jaw) for dental im

plants. Comparable to our results, the results showed an improved OHRQoL for all indications after prosthetic reconstruction. The modification of our OHIP score complicates the comparability of the baseline results of the mentioned study with our results. However, also patients with edentulous jaws and patients with an anterior single-tooth gap benefited most significantly from the treatment.

In order to measure OHRQoL in the present study, a specific and shortened questionnaire based on the validated and reliable OHIP score was developed to consider representative impairments of maxillary sinus augmentation like sinusitis and to relieve the clinical application. In a cross sectional study, Allen et McMillan proofed that a shortened OHIP-14 version showed a similar ability to assess OHRQoL compared to the detailed OHIP-49 version. However, there has been some concern that the short-form OHIP-14 may not detect improvements following clinical intervention due to floor effects. The OHIP was used as a measure because it showed high test-retest reliability and was validated in numerous cross-sectional population studies.

Within the limitations of this study, the results demonstrated a high long-term survival for sinus augmentation procedures and significant improvement of OHRQoL after this procedure. Therefore, sinus augmentation procedures are highly valuable treatment options in implant dentistry.