Peer coverage \u00b7 DGZI
The Crown Down concept enters the peer literature in DGZI's implants journal.
In Issue 3/2026 of implants, the international quarterly of DGZI (Deutsche Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Zahn\u00e4rztliche Implantologie, Europe's oldest professional implantology society), Dr. Gregori M. Kurtzman authored a peer feature that names the Crown Down concept in its title. It is the first independent third-party editorial in a European society journal to name the concept, and marks a threshold moment in how the underlying idea is being discussed outside of Crown Down's own authored coverage.
- Independent peer feature. Not commissioned, sponsored, or paid for by Crown Down.
- Published in implants, the international quarterly of DGZI (Europe's oldest implantology society), by OEMUS MEDIA AG (Leipzig, Germany).
- Names the Crown Down concept in the article title, framing it as a response to five decades of essentially unchanged osteotomy preparation.
The article
What Dr. Kurtzman argues
Dr. Kurtzman’s piece, “Rethinking implantosteotomy preparation: material science, biomechanics, and the crown down concept”, opens on a claim that most implantologists reading it will have felt intuitively for years but rarely see written in a peer venue: the osteotomy step of implant surgery has not meaningfully evolved for more than fifty years, even while nearly everything around it has.
“Implant osteotomy preparation has remained fundamentally unchanged for more than five decades despite significant advances in implant design, surface technology, digital treatment planning, and guided surgery.”
“Conventional sequential drilling using stainless steel drills has demonstrated excellent long-term clinical success but is associated with progressive drill wear, reduced cutting efficiency, multiple drilling steps, and increased frictional heat generation with repeated use.”
From those two opening premises, the article develops a case that four specific failure modes of the classic sequential-drilling model (progressive drill wear, reduced cutting efficiency, the multi-step ladder itself, and frictional heat generation) are not incidental inconveniences of the technique but structural consequences of the material choice (stainless steel) and the architecture (many drills of increasing diameter). Fifty years of iterative refinement on top of that architecture has not resolved them because the constraints are upstream of the sequence.
Dr. Kurtzman then names the Crown Down concept as one response to that structural problem: a subtractive two-drill sequence executed with solid tungsten carbide drills, in which the cortical plate is engaged first with a drill matched to the target implant diameter and the trabecular compartment is then prepared with a smaller trabecular drill. The material change (carbide) addresses wear and heat conduction; the architectural change (cortical-first, two drills) addresses cutting efficiency and the number of drilling steps. The piece frames the two changes as reinforcing each other: carbide is what makes the cortical-first inversion mechanically safe, and the two-drill sequence is what makes carbide clinically usable at implant scale.
The article does not claim that the Crown Down concept solves every problem in implant osteotomy preparation, and it is not a randomized controlled trial. It is a peer-authored editorial argument on material science and biomechanics. It positions a concept as a coherent response to a set of long-standing constraints and invites the field to evaluate it.
Editorial commentary
Why this feature matters
A brief note of transparency before the commentary: this page is authored by Dr. Zvi Fudim, DDS, inventor of the Crown Down protocol. The article being covered was authored by Dr. Kurtzman without commission or payment from Crown Down. Independent third-party coverage of the concept is, precisely, the reason this feature deserves attention.
The value of a peer citation in DGZI’s implants is not that it produces immediate purchase decisions. A print / ePaper quarterly is not that kind of medium. Its value is that the concept being written about has cleared three separate gates that didn’t previously exist for the Crown Down protocol in a European society venue: an independent US clinician chose to author the piece, an editorial board reviewed and accepted the framing, and the article title uses the concept’s name in a way that signals the term is treated as an established referent rather than an internal brand phrase.
Terminology capture in the peer literature is one of the slower and more durable ways new ideas actually enter a clinical field. Only a small number of concepts in implant surgery achieve it in any given generation: “osseodensification,” “immediate loading,” and “socket shield” are common examples. The Crown Down concept being named in the title of a peer editorial in a European society journal is a first data point on that curve, not a completed transition. The concept becomes established through repeated, independent citations across multiple venues over several years, and Dr. Kurtzman’s feature is the earliest of those.
For clinicians already using or evaluating the protocol, the practical takeaway from Dr. Kurtzman’s piece is that the arguments Crown Down has been making about material science and osteotomy architecture (tungsten carbide’s thermal conductivity and edge hardness relative to stainless steel, cortical-first subtractive drilling, and a compressed drill sequence) can be independently reconstructed from the underlying biomechanics without reference to Crown Down’s marketing. Whether a given clinician arrives at the same conclusions is a separate question, and the peer literature is the correct venue for that debate to continue.
About the author of the peer feature
Dr. Gregori M. Kurtzman, DDS
Dr. Kurtzman is a US-based general dentist and implantologist with over three decades in clinical practice and a large body of published work in dental and implant journals. His writing appears regularly in international peer-reviewed and trade publications covering implant dentistry, endodontics, restorative dentistry, and dental materials science. The Issue 3/2026 feature in implants is his editorial argument for revisiting the material science and architecture of implant osteotomy preparation.
Dr. Kurtzman is not affiliated with Crown Down Inc. and his article in implants was authored independently. Coverage on this page is provided by Crown Down as fair-use editorial commentary; the full article is hosted by OEMUS MEDIA AG on epaper.zwp-online.info.
About the venue
DGZI & implants
DGZI (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zahnärztliche Implantologie) is Europe’s oldest professional implantology society, founded in 1970, with a global network of approximately 11,000 implantology specialists.
implants - international magazine of oral implantology is DGZI’s international quarterly, published in English by OEMUS MEDIA AG (Leipzig, Germany, ISSN 1868-3207), and distributed to DGZI members and at major international dental congresses across Europe, MENA, and Asia. Issue 3/2026 also carries the DGZI President’s editorial by Dr. Georg Bach, clinical case reports on ridge augmentation, immediate implant placement with GBR, and full-arch guided rehabilitation, plus institutional coverage of the 55th DGZI Annual Congress in Dresden.
Read the full peer feature
“Rethinking implantosteotomy preparation: material science, biomechanics, and the crown down concept”
By Dr. Gregori M. Kurtzman, DDS · implants, Issue 3/2026 · DGZI / OEMUS MEDIA AG
Want the underlying protocol?
The concept Dr. Kurtzman covers is documented at the 2-drill protocol (sequence, drill speed, irrigation, and osseous management). For the material-science half of his argument, see tungsten carbide vs stainless steel implant drills. For the drill-wear-and-cost angle he raises, see the drill life blind spot. All other press coverage is aggregated on the press hub.
Coverage authored by