Gent-29. clinical experience of glioma surgery using "tailed bullet": overcoming the limitations of conventional neuro-navigation guided surgery

Although conventional neuro-navigation is a useful tool for image-guided glioma surgery, there are several limitations, such as brain shift. We introduce our methods using an identifiable marker, a "tailed bullet", to overcome the limitation of conventional neuro-navigation. A tailed bullet is an identifiable marker that determines the extent of a resection and we introduce our technique and reviewed the clinical results. Tailed bullet resections were carried out for 110 glioma cases (WHO grade 2, 3 and 4 glioma was 14, 36 and 60 cases, respectively). We achieved a gross total resection (GTR) in 71 patients (64.5%), subtotal resection (STR) in 36 patients (32.7%), and partial resection (PR) in 3 patients (2.7%). The overall median survival (OS) duration of grade 3 and 4 gliomas were 20.9 (range, 1.2 ~ 82.4) and 13.6 months (range, 1.4 ~ 173.4), respectively. Extent of resection (GTR), younger age, and higher initial Karnofsky Performance Score (KPS) were related to longer overall survival (OS) for grade-4 gliomas. There was no significant adverse event directly related to the use of tailed bullets. Considering the limitations of conventional neuro-navigation methods, the tailed bullets could be helpful during glioma resection. We believe the method to be easy to apply technique and overcomes the limitation from the conventional neuro-navigation. Further studies are needed to verify the clinical benefits of using tailed bullets.
Source: Neuro-Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: GENETICS AND EPIGENETICS Source Type: research