Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Neurosurgery

Background: Colloid cysts are benign but challenging lesions of the third ventricle.Surgical intervention is usually only needed in symptomatic cases with larger cysts with a diameter of 8 mm or more. The traditional standard surgical technique has been known to be the microsurgical resection usually via a transcallosal or transcortical transventricular approach. Endoscopic resection is being more favoured in the last decade owing to its minimally invasive nature. A big debate is raised whether to resect such cysts microscopically or endoscopically.Some authors declared that endoscope assisted microscopic resection can bring the advantages of both techniques.The pendulum of the learning curve of the endoscopic technique is longer than the microscopic. However, and to our knowledge there is no detailed comparative study that was performed comparing the three techniques together.We are aiming here to compare the three techniques regarding Outcome. Methods: A retrospective data extraction of our prospectively maintained database was done where only operated patients with colloid cysts presenting with a GCS 14 or more were included as well as a minimum of 12 months follow up. 50 patients met our criteria and they were compared regarding extent of resection, morbidity, hospital stay duration and long-term complications including hydrocephalus and shunt dependency.Results: Fifty (50) patients met our inclusion criteria. In 13 patients (26%) the cyst was resected microscopically, in 29 patients (58%) endoscopically while only 8 patients (16%) were resected by the endoscope assisted technique

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