Neurooncology

A woman in her late 50s with a left frontal lobe convexity meningioma underwent an elective endovascular embolisation of the left middle meningeal artery and distal branches of the left superficial temporal artery prior to surgical resection of the tumour. On postoperative day 46, she developed scalp necrosis, leading to poor wound healing requiring wound debridement and a complex plastic surgery reconstruction with a rotational flap. Endovascular embolisation of vascular tumours prior to surgical resection does not come without risks...

BACKGROUND: Brain metastases (BM) are a common and challenging issue, with their incidence on the rise due to advancements in systemic therapies and increased patient survival. Most patients present with single BM, some of them without any further extracranial metastasis (i.e., solitary BM). The significance of postoperative intracranial tumor volume in the treatment of singular and solitary BM is still debated. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the impact of resection and postoperative tumor burden on overall survival (OS) in patients with single BM...

Primary brainstem gliomas are still poorly studied in neurooncology. This concept includes tumors with different histological and genetic features, as well as variable clinical course and outcomes. Nevertheless, treatment implies radiotherapy without a clear idea of morphological substrate of disease in 80% of cases. Small number of studies and insufficient data on histological and genetic nature of brainstem tumors complicate clear diagnostic and treatment algorithms. This review provides current information regarding primary glial brainstem tumors...

BACKGROUND: Methylation analysis has become a powerful diagnostic tool in modern neurooncology. This technique is valuable to diagnose new brain tumor types. OBJECTIVE: To describe the MRI and histological pattern of neuroepithelial tumor with PLAGL1 gene fusion. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We present a 6-year-old patient with small right frontal intraaxial tumor causing drug resistant epilepsy. Despite indolent preoperative clinical course and MRI features suggesting glioneuronal tumor, histological evaluation revealed characteristics of high-grade glioma, ependymoma and neuroblastoma...

BACKGROUND: Currently, endoscopic third ventriculostomy and simultaneous biopsy of deep midline brain tumors are a generally accepted option in neurooncology. Nevertheless, effectiveness of this surgery and diagnostic accuracy of biopsy are not without drawbacks. An alternative to endoscopic surgery may be simultaneous microsurgical third ventriculostomy and biopsy of deep midline tumors. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate effectiveness and safety of burr hole microsurgical third ventriculostomy in the treatment of deep midline brain tumors...

The mutational status of the isocitrate dehydrogenase ( IDH ) gene plays a key role in the treatment of glioma patients because it is known to affect energy metabolism pathways relevant to glioma. Physio-metabolic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enables the non-invasive analysis of oxygen metabolism and tissue hypoxia as well as associated neovascularization and microvascular architecture. However, evaluating such complex neuroimaging data requires computational support. Traditional machine learning algorithms and simple deep learning models were trained with radiomic features from clinical MRI (cMRI) or physio-metabolic MRI data...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Resection of gliomas in or close to motor areas is at high risk for morbidity and development of surgery-related deficits. Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) including nTMS-based tractography is suitable for presurgical planning and risk assessment. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of postoperative motor status and the spatial relation to motor eloquent brain tissue in order to increase the understanding of postoperative motor deficits. Patient data, nTMS examinations and imaging studies were retrospectively reviewed, corticospinal tracts (CST) were reconstructed with two different approaches of nTMS-based seeding...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) matrix biomarkers have become increasingly valuable surrogate markers of neuropsychiatric diseases in research and clinical practice. In contrast, CSF cells have been rarely investigated due to their relative scarcity and fragility, and lack of common collection and cryopreservation protocols, with limited exceptions for neurooncology and primary immune-based diseases like multiple sclerosis. the advent of a microfluidics-based multi-omics approach to studying individual cells has allowed for the study of cellular phenotyping, intracellular dynamics, and intercellular relationships that provide multidimensionality unable to be obtained through acellular fluid-phase analyses...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

PURPOSE: Complex visual hallucinations are rarely seen in neurooncology. They are commonly observed alongside psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia or dementia, in Parkinson's or Lewy-body disease, after opioid medications or anesthesia, and, in particular, they appear with visual impairments. METHODS: Here we report two normal-sighted and mentally healthy patients with unusual visual hallucinations after the resection and irradiation of brain metastases, the main features of which were persistent colorful and meaningful images with hallucinatory perseveration...

A female patient in her early 20s presented with increasing proptosis of her left eye over 2 months. She had no other signs of diplopia, pain or visual loss on initial presentation. Subsequent imaging of her orbits revealed a medial rectus tumour. A transorbital open biopsy of this tumour was non-diagnostic/inconclusive, hence a combined transorbital and endonasal resection of this tumour was performed. Histopathology of the resected tumour revealed an unusual inflammatory-rich spindle cell neoplasm, which was determined to be a primary orbital ectopic atypical meningioma...

Opsoclonus-myoclonus-ataxia syndrome (OMAS) is a rare immune-mediated movement disorder occurring as a paraneoplastic manifestation of neuroblastic tumours (NTs), especially neuroblastoma in infancy. Ganglioneuroma (GN), the benign tumour in the spectrum, is rarely associated with OMAS. We report the case of a child in her second year of life presenting with acute onset of progressive paraplegia and OMAS. MRI showed diffuse and infiltrating left paraspinal mass from T3-T9 levels with differentials of neuroblastoma or ganglioneuroblastoma...

Intramedullary spinal cord metastases (ISCM) are a rare and challenging manifestation of metastatic cancer that have devastating impacts on the individual's neurological function, survival expectancy and overall quality of life. Given the rarity and poor prognosis, there is a lack of consensus in management. Uterine carcinosarcoma itself is a rare cancer, accounting for less than 3% of all uterine cancers. It carries a poor prognosis, with only one-third of patients surviving beyond 5 years. There are no previous reports of uterine carcinosarcoma metastases to the spinal cord...

Primary neurolymphomatosis is the direct infiltration of lymphomatous neoplastic cells into nerve roots and/or peripheral nerves. A 67-year-old man had a 24-month history of progressive and severe left lower limb neuropathic pain, ipsilateral ankle dorsiflexion weakness and gait disturbance. Gadolinium-enhanced MRI showed thickening and enhancement of the cauda equina, L5, S1 and S2 nerve roots. 18 Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography showed concordant hypermetabolism. L5 nerve root biopsy confirmed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma...

Intracranial metastasis is a rare sequela of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC), typically presenting within the first 2 years after primary tumor detection. Our patient is a 72-year-old man diagnosed with an EAC in 2015 and presented with recurrence of a distant solitary brain lesion approximately 6 years after the initial diagnosis. Histological diagnosis was confirmed as EAC with all relevant indicators. In addition, we used genomic profiling to detect biomarkers that can be useful in the future for therapies...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The review begins with an overview of the fundamental principles/physics underlying light, fluorescence, and other light-matter interactions in biological tissues. It then focuses on 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA)-induced protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) fluorescence spectroscopy methods used in neurosurgery (e.g., intensity, time-resolved) and in so doing, describe their specific features (e.g., hardware requirements, main processing methods) as well as their strengths and limitations. Finally, we review current clinical applications and future directions of 5-ALA-induced protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) fluorescence spectroscopy in neurosurgery...

Dural metastases of prostate adenocarcinoma are an extremely rare complication and may mimic intracranial hematoma. Preoperatively diagnosis may be difficult due to similarities in symptoms and radiological appearance. We present a 65-year-old man admitted to the ED with a history of headache, nausea, vomiting, vertigo, diplopia, as well as numbness of his left lower extremity. Past medical history confirmed metastatic prostate cancer disease. After computed tomography and contrast computed tomography, the consulting radiologist diagnosed a chronic subdural hematoma...

BACKGROUND: Glioma is caused by multiple genomic alterations. The evolving classification of gliomas emphasizes the significance of molecular testing. Next generation sequencing (NGS) offers the assessment of parallel combinations of multiple genetic alterations and identifying actionable mutations that guide treatment. This study comprehensively analyzed glioma patients using multi-gene NGS panels, providing powerful insights to inform diagnostic classification and targeted therapies...