Abstract
No part of the cranial base is immune to surgical pathology or to its use as a pathway to access lesions in the intra- or extracranial spaces. Tumors and multiple other lesions can involve any of the intracranial fossae and can appear in the paranasal sinuses, nasal cavity, infratemporal and pterygopalatine fossae, and orbit and in the retropharyngeal and craniocervical regions (Fig. 1.1). Managing these lesions requires an extensive knowledge of the cranial base and its intra- and extracranial relationships. The endoscopic endonasal route has evolved in recent years to provide access to lesions located in the ventral skull base from the crista galli to the odontoid with defined limits laterally. These approaches require a complementary detailed anatomic knowledge of the skull base from below and its correlation with the anatomy of the nasal cavity. The superior microscopic and the inferior endoscopic angles of view need to match perfectly for the completion of these procedures. The real three-dimensional microsurgical view of anatomy and distances has to be adapted to the two-dimensional panoramic view given by the endoscope (Fig. 1.2).
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Fliss, D.M., Gil, Z. (2016). The Cranial Base. In: Atlas of Surgical Approaches to Paranasal Sinuses and the Skull Base. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48632-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48632-0_1
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