Surgical navigation for meningioma surgery

The use of surgical navigation systems (SNSs) is well established in intracranial surgery for gliomas and metastases yet some doubt its benefit in surgery for intracranial meningiomas. In this chapter we review the authors' experiences and literature on how use of surgical navigation may be useful in craniotomy for intracranial mengingiomas. With the exception of small convexity meningiomas, finding the tumor is not a common problem. The most important issues where the capabilities of SNS can be used to the surgeon's advantage are optimizing the bone and dural opening, avoiding arterial and venous structures, defining the frontal air sinuses and determining one's location within a large tumor devoid of landmarks. Contemporary SNS can provide instantaneous localization and orientation information, as well as utilize multimodality imaging that is required to address these problems and is an effective means of optimizing surgery for many intracranial meningiomas.