Abstract
Between 1972 and 1996, 450 consecutive patients with intracranial meningiomas were operated on at Çukurova University School of Medicine. By size, intracranial meningiomas were classified as huge (>6 cm minimum diameter when extrapolated to anatomic size) or not huge (<6 cm). The present study involves 93 patients who underwent 109 craniotomies for the removal of huge meningiomas. All patients are adult, with 31 men and 62 women or a 1:2 male to female ratio, with a mean age of 48.7 ± 2.3 years at the time of diagnosis. The average duration of observed survival in 85 patients followed in the computed tomography (CT) era was 4.8 years and that of 8 patients in the pre-CT era was 8.8 years. Eleven patients died by the last follow-up assessment. Seventy-nine patients were still alive at the last follow-up assessment. The overall postoperative mortality rate was 3.2%. The overall recurrence rate was 19%. In descending order of frequency, the first five anatomic locations of the huge meningiomas were the parasagittal region in 18 patients (19.3%), the cerebral convexity in 15 (16.1%), the olfactory groove in 15 (16.1%), the falx in 12 (12.9%), and the tuberculum sellae in 11 (11.8%). The overall results of surgical treatment in 93 patients were total removal in 59 (63.4%), radical subtotal in 18 (18.3%), and subtotal in 16 (17.2%), with good outcome in 69 (74.1%), fair in 16 (17.2%), and poor in 5 (5.3%). In conclusion, the huge size of meningiomas affects the extent of removal, recurrence rate, postoperative outcome, operative morbidity and mortality rates, and survival time negatively.
