Bone grafting and sinus lift in Downtown Brooklyn

Bone grafting rebuilds a defect so your own bone can fill it back in. Since 2014 we have used your own tissue, called autogenous tissue, in nearly every grafting case we perform: bone harvested from a nearby site in your own jaw, combined with PRF made from your own blood. That is a deliberate choice, and it is different from how most offices graft.

Common versions are socket preservation at the time of an extraction, ridge augmentation to widen or heighten a healed site, and regenerative grafting around a tooth or implant that has lost supporting bone.

The standard approach in most offices is allograft: processed donor bone that arrives as sterile granules in a small vial, which is why clinicians nickname it bone in a bottle. It is convenient and there is no second surgical site. What it is not is living tissue. The granules are a mineral scaffold with no cells in them, so your body has to slowly resorb the particles and replace them with bone of its own, and how completely that happens varies.

Your own bone is different. It arrives with living bone cells, your own proteins, and your own blood supply already in it, so it does not have to be converted into something else first. It behaves like the site it came from. There is no processing, no donor, and nothing for your immune system to sort out.

This is a genuine, ongoing debate in our field, and Dr. Zidile discusses it openly with colleagues. Donor and synthetic materials have legitimate uses, and there are cases where the volume required or the shape of the defect makes them the right call. We will tell you plainly when a case is one of them. The difference is that here they are the exception, not the default.

PRF stands for platelet rich fibrin. We draw a small amount of your blood at the start of your visit and spin it in a centrifuge in the office. That separates out a soft, natural clot rich in your own platelets, white cells, and growth factors, which we shape into a membrane or mix into the graft before placing it.

Nothing is added to it. There are no chemicals, no additives, and no synthetic gel. It is your own blood, concentrated, and then put back where it is needed to support healing.

We follow the advanced PRF protocols developed by Dr. Joseph Choukroun in France, the clinician who originated the technique. Spin speed, timing, and tube handling all change what the final membrane contains, which is why we follow a defined protocol rather than improvising.

The upper back jaw sits directly below the maxillary sinus. When upper molars have been missing for a while, that bone thins and the sinus expands downward, leaving too little height for an implant.

A sinus lift raises the sinus membrane and places graft material beneath it. A minor lift can often be done through the implant site itself at the same visit. A larger lift is done from the side of the jaw and heals for several months before the implant is placed.

Expect swelling that peaks around day two or three and mild bruising in some cases. Soreness is usually controlled with over-the-counter medication; we prescribe more when a case warrants it.

Soft food for one to two weeks, no smoking, and for sinus grafts no nose blowing, straws, or air travel for a defined period, which we spell out in writing.

You will have written instructions and a direct line to the doctor on call at (718) 643-1953 for anything that concerns you during healing.

Regenerative bone surgery is a defined part of periodontal specialty training. Both doctors completed three years of surgical residency at NYU, are board certified in periodontics, and teach and lecture in the specialty.

Because the practice is referral-based and heavily weighted toward revision and salvage cases, we routinely rebuild sites that were grafted or implanted elsewhere. That experience also means we will tell you when a graft is not worth doing.