Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Cerebellopontine angle is an area with extremely critical structures, therefore understanding its tumors behavior with the implications on the surgical outcome will help in reduction of the possible surgical complications, eventually improves the patients quality of life.
OBJECTIVE:
Our object is to illustrate the various aspects of clinical presentation and surgical complications with linkage to the tumor size regarding cerebellopontine angle (CPA) tumors in Iraq.
PATIENTS AND METHOD:
A prospective cohort study for thirty patients at the Surgical Specialty Hospital (Al Shaheed Ghazi Al Hariri Hospital) have been studied over a 1-year period (2014 / 2015), and followed up postoperatively for 6 months. Their mean age of was 36 years. The suboccipital retrosigmoid approach has been utilized for CPA tumors removal.
RESULTS:
The most common presentation was vertigo followed by tinnitus. There were two cases (6%) of cerebrospinal fluid leak. Facial nerve function was measured by the House Brackmann (HB) system and function further classified into three categories: excellent (HB I-II), intermediate (HB III-IV), and poor (HB V-VI) outcome following surgery, showing that all cases below 20 mm tumor size have an excellent outcome and (67%) of cases with > 20 mm tumor size shows poor outcome. One death in this study (mortality rate, 3%) was due to respiratory cessation.
CONCLUSION:
A female preponderance noticed. Significant relationship between tumor size and facial nerve postsurgical functional outcome, with the larger C.P.A. tumors yield worse outcomes. Tumor size also influences the development of CSF leak and operative morbidity and mortality.
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