Frontal Keyhole Craniotomy for Resection of Low- and High-Grade Gliomas

Minimally invasive techniques are increasingly being used to access intra-axial brain lesions.

To describe a method of resecting frontal gliomas through a keyhole craniotomy and share the results with these techniques.

We performed a retrospective review of data obtained on all patients undergoing resection of frontal gliomas by the senior author between 2012 and 2015. We describe our technique for resecting dominant and nondominant gliomas utilizing both awake and asleep keyhole craniotomy techniques.

After excluding 1 patient who received a biopsy only, 48 patients were included in the study. Twenty-nine patients (60%) had not received prior surgery. Twenty-six patients (54%) were diagnosed with WHO grade II/III tumors, and 22 patients (46%) were diagnosed with glioblastoma. Twenty-five cases (52%) were performed awake. At least 90% of the tumor was resected in 35 cases (73%). Three of 43 patients with clinical follow-up experienced permanent deficits.

We provide our experience in using keyhole craniotomies for resecting frontal gliomas. Our data demonstrate the feasibility of using minimally invasive techniques to safely and aggressively treat these tumors.