Treatment results in the same surgery method of the high cervical spinal schwannoma

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to explore the outcomes for patients with high cervical spinal schwannoma after microsurgery. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study enrolled ten patients who received high cervical schwannomas microsurgery. The data collected retrospectively include sex, Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) score before surgery, and KPS score after surgery. Results: The KPS scores of the patients changed from 30 to 90 (average 70) before surgery to KPS scores of 50 to 90 (average 82) upon discharge. The duration of the follow-up in the clinics was 2–192 months (average 44). The mean hospital stay was 7–35 days (average 12.4 days). We used paired t-test and found a significant improvement of the KPS score. Conclusion: High cervical spinal neoplasm is relatively rare and the surgery is technically challenging. Many articles discussed the classification of tumors or surgical approaches, while few studies explored the outcome of the surgery. In this article, the patients with high cervical spinal neoplasm all underwent the same type of surgery. After the surgery, the patients' quality of life had shown significant improvement.

Keywords

• Cervical spinal neoplasm
• outcome
• schwannoma