Biomechanical Simulation of Haemostatic Sponges for Sinus Lift Application

The sinus lift is a necessary procedure prior to the placement of dental implants in cases of insufficient residual alveolar bone height. This procedure is performed to increase the bone thickness providing implant stability. Due to the risk of infectious complications, haemostatic sponges have been used to replace granular bone substitutes as space maintainers. However, the main difficulty with this change in procedure is to predict the sub-volume of the membrane space, as there is not yet sufficient data in the literature to understand and predict the behavior of haemostatic sponges under these conditions starting with the effect of hydration. Therefore the objective of this study is to provide a numerical twin that describes the morphological behavior of the haemostatic sponge under the effect of hydration. Simulation was based on a thermoelastic model performed with finite element analysis to mimic the sponge behavior and reproduce experimental data.