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Simona Buonamassa

Publications and source records attributed to Simona Buonamassa.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2004

Surgical treatment of intracavernous trigeminal schwannomas via a fronto-temporal epidural approach.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of the fronto-temporal epidural approach in managing intracavernous trigeminal schwannomas. Five unselected patients harboring an intracavernous trigeminal schwannoma were operated on. Each of them was cured by a single craniotomy. In all cases the skull base approach described by Dolenc [Acta Neurochir. (Wien) 130 (1994) 55] was performed. The complete resection of the tumor and its capsule was gained in all five cases. There was no surgical mortality. No patient developed postoperative major complications. The fronto-temporal epidural approach can be applied for parasellar type trigeminal schwannomas, thus avoiding the exposure of the temporal lobe, and resulting in good chance for total excision of the tumor together with minimal surgical complications.

Cavernous Sinus↗
PubMed2004

Endoscopic third ventriculostomy in idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus.

OBJECTIVE: To define the role and indications for an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) in patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (INPH). A series of 25 patients treated by endoscopic technique was analyzed, and the results were compared with those of 14 studies reporting patients treated by shunting. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with INPH were treated by ETV from January 1994 through December 2000. All were younger than 75 years of age, had a preoperative clinical history of 1 year or less, had prevalence of gait disturbance with scarce or mild dementia, had marked ventricular enlargement on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and had intracranial pressure values ranging from 8 to 12 mm Hg. All were studied by a phase-contrast MRI flow study 1 month after ETV. The 14 reviewed series of patients treated by shunting (all published after 1980) each include more than 25 patients, for a total of 777 patients. RESULTS: The overall rate of neurological improvement after ETV in our series was 72% (including two patients reoperated on because of absence of flow in the MRI scan); this percentage is slightly higher than that found in the 14 series of shunted patients (66%). Gait disturbance showed a high rate of improvement when compared with other symptoms, both in our ETV study and in other shunting series. Postoperative complications occurred only in one patient (4%) with an intracerebral frontal hemorrhage and in 37.9% of patients from the series including shunted patients. CONCLUSION: In patients with INPH showing short duration of symptoms, prevalence of gait disturbance, and slight mental impairment, ETV provides similar results to those of shunting. We suggest performing ETV in these patients and reserving shunting only for those who do not improve after ETV, despite the presence of cerebrospinal fluid flow through the ventriculostomy on MRI flow studies. The good results after ETV in our series indirectly confirm that the cerebrospinal fluid absorption is good or at least sufficient in selected patients with INPH.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Chondroma of the petrous apex.

The clinicopathological features of a chondroma of petrous apex area examined with magnetic resonance (MRI) are presented. The extreme rarity of the location, the MRI aspect, and the surgical strategy based upon MRI studies make this case noteworthy.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Dysphagia and dyspnea due to an anterior cervical osteophyte.

Hypertrophic anterior cervical osteophytes have been reported as a cause of dysphagia, with about 100 cases described in the literature; on the other hand, chronic or acute dyspnea due to edema of the laryngeal inlet or bilateral vocal cord adduction-fixation is rare. We report a 57-year-old patient with a 2-year history of dysphagia and episodic dyspnea, who suffered sudden, severe respiratory distress necessitating emergency tracheotomy. A voluminous anterior cervical osteophyte at the C5 level was diagnosed by computed tomography (CT) and barium swallow test and removed by an anterior approach to the cervical spine, with clinical remission. The incidence, pathogenetic mechanisms, radiological diagnosis, and surgical indications of anterior cervical osteophytes associated with dysphagia and dyspnea are discussed. We advise examining cervical spine patients with dysphagia and/or dyspnea by radiography and CT when other investigations are not conclusive for a digestive or respiratory pathology.

Cervical Vertebrae↗