It seems that in the pattern of my clinical life the first part of the year is dedicated to sinus grafting for one reason or another, or at least my brain is full of it!
In the middle of February I spoke to the ADI Study Club in London on digital sinus grafting which was a combination of the research and service evaluation that we’ve provided in the practice on simultaneous sinus grafting combined with the digital stuff that we do for planning; both of which have come together with a bang in the last two years.
I was also asked to do a webinar for Geistlich on the simultaneous sinus grafting stuff that we have and this is something that has been brought together by the research team at the practice with details of the work we have done over the last eight years. This really changes the way people sinus graft and also speeds things up for patients and reduced the amount of surgical procedures for them.
Historically sinus grafting has, in large part, been done as a separate graft procedure followed by implant placement unless there is sufficient height for placing implants. What we’ve found over the last eight years in the practice is that, as long as we can get stability of an implant in position and do the sinus graft appropriately with the appropriate mixture of autogenous bone and graft material, 95% of the time we can place implants simultaneously. Often in these cases we can also start to restore at six weeks.
This is a real game changer in terms of patient treatment for sinus grafting and, if you approach these in a systematic way, it takes a lot of the mystique and mystery out of sinus grafting and helps to reduce complications massively.
Together with this, if you factor in the detail about distal cantilever restorations and how to avoid sinus grafting entirely in cases where you can just hang an extra tooth off an implant where grafting isn’t required, it changes patients experiences all round from a procedure which was really quite significant to something which becomes much more routine.
To that end, it’s worth me introducing the sinus grafting course that we provide through The Campbell Academy for anybody who is thinking of moving to this more complicated aspect of treatment in their practice.
The course itself is a three-day live skills course, the first day of which is detailed teaching and model surgery. You get a real understanding of what we’re trying to achieve with simultaneous sinus grafting from an instrument point of view, an academic point of view and a hands on point of view.
The following day is a cadaver surgery day at the West Midlands Surgical Teaching Centre at Coventry Hospital.
Craig Wales and Colin Maciver, two maxillofacial surgeons from Glasgow come to assist and present on the course and their expertise is incredible. Craig is actually the Director for base of skull surgery in Glasgow (which is quite a lofty title) and between them they’re able to provide endoscopic surgery to see inside the sinuses to really understand what’s going on before delegates provide their own sinus grafting on fresh frozen cadavers from the US.
The interesting thing this year is that cost of the cadavers from the US has elevated massively due to the whole Brexit pound thing that I don’t really understand! But never mind!!
The final day is live surgery using the audiovisual system at The Campbell Clinic for delegates to see sinus grafting being carried out. This really brings everything together and all the delegates really hope that when I provide the live surgery in the practice it’s really difficult and I get myself into trouble because that’s good for the soul!
We limit the course to twelve and we have three or four places remaining. If you’re interested in this and would like to come along then please get in touch with Tom - info@campbellacademy.co.uk
It would be great to see you and to introduce you to the tribe!
Blog Post Number: 1222
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