Dr. Giorgio Carusi reviews twenty years of clinical experience with the crestal approach to maxillary sinus floor elevation, tracing the technique's evolution from the original Summers and Cosci protocols.
Maxillary sinus surgery has long been a subject of discussion among clinicians who favor a more traumatic lateral window approach through the vestibular wall and those who favor a crestal, less invasive access.
Over the past twenty years, Dr. Carusi has developed and refined a strategy for elevating the maxillary sinus floor through a crestal approach, beginning with cases involving a residual bone height of at least 5 millimeters, consistent with the technique originally described by Summers in 1994 and later modified by Cosci.
The presentation traces how this crestal approach has been progressively adapted to manage cases with lower residual bone heights, discussing the clinical decision-making, instrumentation, and technique modifications that have allowed the indications for a crestal sinus lift to be extended over two decades of clinical use.
