Assessment of postoperative complications in craniopharyngioma patients: An approach based on the heterogeneous tumor-hypothalamus relationship

摘要

A careful scrutiny of the long-term consequences of craniopharyngioma (CP) surgery is morenecessary now than ever. Despite CPs being acknowledged as one of the most challengingintracranial tumors, most surgical series published in the past two decades share similaroptimal results, with very low morbidity rates and almost negligible mortality. is is evenmore surprising when considering the generalized use of the endoscopic endonasal approach,a particularly complex surgical technique requiring a high degree of training and expertise, onlyachievable in a limited number of pituitary centers with a very large caseload. Aside from thepaucity of CP patients, what hinders the efforts to monitor the real impact of surgery on thisrare, highly complex pathology is the extreme clinicopathological heterogeneity of these tumors.Which factors do substantially influence the surgical risk for a given CP patient? Is patientoutcome mainly determined by the surgeon’s hands, or is it intrinsically linked to specific tumorfeatures? Gathering objective data to answer these questions should be given a high priority.