Hydrodynamic ultrasonic maxillary sinus lift: review of a new technique and presentation of a clinical case

Placing implants in the posterior maxillary area has the drawback of working with scarce, poor quality bone in a significant percentage of cases. Numerous advanced surgical techniques have been developed to overcome the difficulties associated with these limitations. Subsequent to reports on the elevation of the maxillary sinus through the lateral approach, there were reports on the use of the crestal approach, which is less aggressive but requires a minimal amount of bone. Furthermore, it is more sensitive to operator technique, as the integrity of the sinus membrane is checked indirectly. The aim of this paper is to review the technical literature on minimally invasive sinus lift and compare the advantages of different techniques with Intralift™, a new technique. The present study is a review of techniques used to perform minimally invasive sinus lift published in Cochrane, Embase and Medline over the past ten years and the description of the crestal sinus lift technique based on minimally invasive piezosurgery, with the example of a case report. Only eight articles were found on minimally invasive techniques for sinus lift. The main advantage of this new technique, Intralift, is that it does not require a minimum amount of crestal bone (indeed, the smaller the width of the crestal bone, the better this technique is performed). The possibility of damage to the sinus membrane is minimised by using ultrasound based hydrodynamic pressure to lift it, while applying a very non-aggressive crestal approach. We believe that this technique is an advance in the search for less traumatic and aggressive techniques, which is the hallmark of current surgery.