How to treat cavernous sinus tumors

Cavernous sinus tumor treatment is difficult because cavernous sinus region is rich in nerves and blood vessels, blood vessels are very important large blood vessels, internal carotid artery, and branching blood vessels, involving cranial nerves are also a lot of surgery will cause further damage to nerves, blood vessels, so the patient will have complications or sequelae, the surgical difficulty is relatively high, the risk is relatively high, so the surgical treatment tends to be conservative surgical region. Many tumors of cavernous sinus need to go to determine the nature of the tumor after the preoperative reading of the film, and then decide the next step of the surgical plan, for example, preoperative imaging is highly suspected to be cavernous sinus cavernous hemangioma, although it grows very large, but it can be treated with radiotherapy such as Gamma Knife treatment. Many patients also have good results with non-surgical treatments such as Gamma Knife will afterward, and there are no surgical risks, and the patient will not experience symptoms such as palsy of the motor nerve or complete inability to lift the entire eyelid. Surgery may not pose too many life-threatening problems, but if damage to the internal carotid artery results in intraoperative hemorrhage, hemorrhagic shock can occur, which can be life-threatening. Most doctors are concerned about the risk of motor nerve palsy and therefore recommend non-surgical Gamma Knife treatment. However, only cavernous hemangiomas are effectively treated by Gamma Knife, while other angiolipomas may not be effective with radiation or Gamma Knife treatment, and surgery is still needed to resolve the patient’s symptoms. In addition, many cavernous sinus tumors, which may be trigeminal nerve sheath tumors, have boundaries with nerves and blood vessels, and are encapsulated, and patients are advised to undergo surgical treatment. If the tumor is not primary in cavernous sinus, but invades into cavernous sinus from other location, for example, pituitary tumor, chordoma can grow into cavernous sinus from the primary site. For this kind of tumor, if the tumor texture is relatively soft, the cavernous sinus can be opened to remove the tumor in the sinus; if the tumor texture is very tough or has done several times of surgery, radiotherapy and other pre-treatment, it is not very recommended that the patient go back to cut the cavernous sinus, and the chances of nerve damage are very high, and it may be necessary to take other non-surgical methods. Therefore, the cavernous sinus region surgery has a certain specificity and difficulty, especially to protect the nerve function is difficult, take the surgery must be grasped.