Novel concepts and strategies in skull base reconstruction after endoscopic endonasal surgery

Recently, a variety of craniofacial approaches has been adopted to enter the skull base, including the endonasal endoscopic technique. An effective watertight technique, the reconstruction can be performed using different materials, both autologous and non-autologous, individually or combined in a multilayer fashion. The current study focuses on the development of new advanced devices and techniques that help to reduce the postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leak rate. Additive manufacturing allows the design of devices with tailored structural and functional features, as well as injectable semi-interpenetrating polymer networks and composites; therefore, specific mechanical/rheological and injectability studies are valuable. Accordingly, we propose new additive manufactured and injectable devices.