Search

A fixed retractor is routinely used during surgery for vestibular schwannoma to maintain the surgical corridor; however, brain injuries can be caused by use of retractors. The aim of this study was to present strategies for retractorless surgery for giant vestibular schwannomas and compare retractorless surgery with traditional retractor-assisted surgery to illustrate feasibility and potentially superiority of retractorless surgery. Clinical data of 61 patients with giant (≥4 cm diameter) vestibular schwannomas undergoing craniotomy were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were divided into 2 cohorts: 1) 35 patients with traditional retractor surgery performed between June 2016 and July 2017; 2) 26 patients with retractorless surgery performed between June 2016 and July 2018. Duration of operation, intraoperative blood loss, extent of resection, rate of retention of facial nerve function, postoperative brain injury rate, intracranial infection rate, hospitalization time, and grade of facial nerve function were compared between the 2 groups. The incidence of postoperative brain injury was 3.84% in the retractorless surgery group, which was significantly lower compared with the traditional retractor surgery group (22.86%) (P < 0.05). No significant differences were found regarding the other characteristics compared. Through appropriate comprehensive measures, retractorless surgery for giant vestibular schwannomas is an achievable goal. This procedure can reduce the incidence of postoperative brain injury with satisfactory tumor resection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We determined the correspondence between the thalamus and the cortex. • The anisotropy of thalamocortical fiber bundles in patients generally declined. • The abnormalities may be related to damage to the myelin sheath of nerve fibers. • The longer the disease duration, the more serious the damage. Epilepsy is one of the most common diseases of the nervous system. Approximately one-third of epilepsy cases are drug-resistant, among which generalized-onset seizures are very common. The present study aimed to analyze abnormalities of the thalamocortical fiber pathways in each hemisphere of the brains of patients with drug-resistant generalized epilepsy. The thalamocortical structural pathways were identified by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 15 patients with drug-resistant generalized epilepsy and 16 gender/age-matched controls. The thalami of both groups were parcellated into subregions according to the local thalamocortical connectivity pattern. DTI measures of thalamocortical connections were compared between the two groups. Probabilistic tractography analyses showed that fractional anisotropy of thalamocortical pathways in patients with epilepsy decreased significantly, and the radial diffusivity of the left thalamus pathways with homolateral motor and parietal-occipital cortical regions in the drug-resistant epilepsy group increased significantly. In addition to the right thalamus pathway and prefrontal cortical region, fractional anisotropy of all other pathways was inversely correlated with disease duration. The results provide evidence indicating widespread bilateral abnormalities in the thalamocortical pathways in epilepsy patients and imply that the degree of abnormality in the pathway increases with the disease duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]