Surgery of Spinal Tumors

Traditionally, surgery of spinal tumors has been associated with significant risk of neurological deterioration and even mortality. During the last decades, the management of these tumors progressed dramatically, mainly due to the emergence of superior imaging techniques that provide precise and detailed depiction of tumor features, the development of safer approaches, and the introduction of new techniques.

Besides removal of the lesion and preservation of neurological functions, modern surgery of spinal tumors should avoid or treat any existing instability. All these issues will be discussed in our presentation based on our extensive experience. In our series, the most common extramedullary tumors were those arising from the nerve sheath, meningiomas, and filum terminale ependymomas. The intramedullary tumors were usually astrocytomas and ependymomas, and more rarely hemangioblastomas.