|Year : 2012 | Volume
| Issue : 1 | Page : 17
Diagnostic and surgical challenges in resection of cerebellar angle tumors and acoustic neuromas
Neal Patel, Jared Wilkinson, Nicholas Gianaris, Aaron A Cohen-Gadol
Department of Neurological Surgery, Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Background: Cerebellopontine angle (CPA) lesions can mimic more common tumors through nonspecific symptoms and radiologic findings.
Methods: To increase the preoperative diagnostic accuracy for CPA pathologies, the authors review the full spectrum of reported CPA lesions.
Results: A wide spectrum of lesions mimics vestibular schwannoma (VS) in the space of the CPA.
Conclusion: The presence of any suspicious clinical and radiographic finding uncharacteristic of VS makes it necessary to maintain a broad differential diagnosis list. Differentiation of CPA lesions, although challenging, may be best achieved by incorporating the clinical history, physical exam findings, audiometry results, and multi-modality imaging studies to construct a comprehensive preoperative knowledge of the lesion. This knowledge will allow improved operative execution and outcomes.
Aaron A Cohen-Gadol
Department of Neurological Surgery, Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana,
© 2012 Patel et al; This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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