Goat Model for Direct Visualizing the Effectiveness of Detaching Sinus Mucosa in Real Time During Crestal Maxillary Sinus Floor Elevation.

The procedure of crestal maxillary sinus floor elevation presents a great challenge to the field of implant dentistry. Due to the limited visualization in this procedure, the effectiveness of detaching sinus mucosa could not be assessed in real time. We recently developed an ex vivo goat sinus model by cutting the goat residual skulls along four lines determined from computerized tomography (CT) scans, extracting the maxillary premolar or molar teeth, and preparing implant socket in the maxilla. The generated ex vivo goat sinus models exposed the maxilla and the whole maxillary sinus mucosa, thus enabling real-time observation of detaching maxillary sinus mucosa via directly visualizing the working situation of sinus lift tool in the models and directly measuring the length of detached mucosa and space volume generated under the elevated sinus mucosa. One commercially available umbrella-shaped sinus lift curette was used to detach the maxillary sinus mucosa to evaluate the effectiveness of the ex vivo goat sinus models. The results showed that this curette could detach the sinus mucosa 3.75 mm in length in the mesiodistal direction and 2.81 mm in the buccal-palatal direction. Moreover, a space volume of 52.7 μl could be created under the elevated sinus mucosa in the goat ex vivo models. All the experimental results suggested that this ex vivo goat sinus model might be useful in the evaluation of improved or newly designed sinus lift tools for elevating the maxillary sinus mucosa via the crestal approach.