Our experience with surgical treatment of tympanojugular pragangliomas

Tympanojugular paragangliomas are benign and slow growing lesions of the lateral skull base. Due to their localization and vascularity, they represent a surgical challenge. Treatment modalities include preoperative embolization of feeding vessels and tumour itself, surgical removal and irradiation. In our group, 16 patients with large tympanojugular paragangliomas have been operated in the period of 10 years. Surgical radicality has been achieved in 62.5%, in the rest of patients the tumour remnants were either irradiated with a Leksell gamma knife, or left without treatment in a wait-end-rescan approach. According to the benign character of the tumour, radicality is not always the highest goal, since a radical removal may be compromised by a high postoperative morbidity.