Pituitary Tumor – Transcranial Approach

Transcript

Transcranial approach does usually meet a bit longer recovery for the patient but the surgeon definitely gets excellent visualization of all of the structures above the pituitary gland itself. Paradoxically it’s very, it’s sometimes difficult to see the bottom most part of the pituitary gland when you’re coming from above. And that’s definitely, you’re much more easily accessed from below. But from above, it’s typically an incision that starts near the ear and then curls forward behind the hairline towards the midline. And so it’s a bit longer incision and then we do have to remove a portion of skull. And then after that we opened the lining of the brain, but we do not go actually through any brain tissue. The brain is moved aside and we have ways of doing that safely. And then we typically bring in a operating room microscope. We actually visualize the tumor, we visualize the critical nerves and blood vessels and the nerves that are usually in the surgeon’s field or the optic nerves. So those nerves that are transmitting the signal from the eyes back to the brain. So very, very important structures. And then the tumor is removed often piecemeal, and the surgeon hopes it’s again, soft, which they often are, and we’ll come out with the use of a sucker and other specialized instruments that we have for neurosurgery to remove these tumors.