Cerebellar metastases – may surgery play a role in the presence of multiple lesions?

• Main Authors: M. Dabija, V. Dorobăţ, Alina Paiu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Academic Publishing 2017-06-01
• Series: Romanian Neurosurgery
• Subjects: cerebellar metastases; multiple metastases; controversy; complete surgical resection; life expectancy; number vs volume/location
• Online Access: https://www.journals.lapub.co.uk/index.php/roneurosurgery/article/view/985

Brain metastases are the most common form of malignancy presence in the CNS having a more frequent appearance than primary brain tumors. Although secondary cerebellar tumors represent only 15% of all intracranial metastases, they are quite frequent among primary oncological patients and pose a challenge for all of the medical caretakers starting with the neurosurgeon. Among those, a small percent of patients have multiple cerebellar lesions and the therapeutic challenge turns into a medical controversy, especially when it comes to surgical treatment taking into consideration that the life expectancy is lower than one year. A key asset which we have on our side is the anatomical vicinity these lesions occur, this leading us to take into consideration eliminating as many lesions in one single operative time as possible without changing the position of the head during surgery. Based on a retrospective study which concluded that patients with resection of all lesions tend to have a longer life expectancy, and on modern concepts of risks and benefits of oncological surgery and surgery in general, we followed up on three patients presenting posterior and even multiple posterior fossa metastases, taking into consideration individual comorbidities, tumor aspects and the possibility/opportunity of surgical treatment. It turned out that surgery is a safe and effective treatment option and should not be considered harmful or aggressive especially because all of the patients which were under study had a favorable post-operative prognostic and an improved quality of life. We emphasize furthermore the importance of complete lesion resection in as few interventions as possible followed up by radiotherapy/chemotherapy as a key in prolonging these patients life expectancy taking into consideration that the outcome is directly related to the number of lesions rather to the location or volume of them.