Surgical approaches for the gliomas

Abstract

Neurosurgical intervention remains the first step in effective glioma management. Mounting evidence suggests that cytoreduction for low- and high-grade gliomas is associated with a survival benefit. Beyond conventional neurosurgical principles, an array of techniques have been refined in recent years to maximize the effect of the neurosurgical oncologist and facilitate the impact of subsequent adjuvant therapy. With intraoperative mapping techniques, aggressive microsurgical resection can be safely pursued even when tumors occupy essential functional pathways. Other adjunct techniques, such as intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging, intraoperative ultrasonography, and fluorescence-guided surgery, can be valuable tools to safely reduce the tumor burden of low- and high-grade gliomas. Taken together, this collection of surgical strategies has pushed glioma extent of resection towards the level of cellular resolution.

Keywords: 5-aminolevulinic acid; astrocytoma; brain; cancer; cortical mapping; fluorescence-guided surgery; glioblastoma; high-grade glioma; intraoperative MRI; intraoperative ultrasound; low-grade glioma; microsurgery; neuronavigation; oligodendroglioma.