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Updated: Sep 7, 2025
Role of Diffusion MRI Tractography in Endoscopic Endonasal Skull Base Surgery
Published on: July 5, 2021
The MUSES∗: a prognostic study on 1360 patients with sinonasal cancer undergoing endoscopic surgery-based treatment:
Marco Ferrari1, Davide Mattavelli2, Michele Tomasoni2
1Unit of Otorhinolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Neurosciences, "Azienda Ospedale Università di Padova", University of Padua, Padua, Italy; Guided Therapeutics (GTx) Program International Scholarship, University Health Network (UHN), Toronto, ON, Canada; Technology for Health (PhD Program), Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy.
Background:
Over the last 2 decades, transnasal endoscopic surgery (TES) has become the most frequently employed surgical technique to treat sinonasal malignancies. The rarity and heterogeneity of sinonasal cancers have hampered large non-population-based analyses.
Methodology:
All patients receiving TES-including treatment between 1995 and 2021 in 5 referral hospitals were included. A prognostic study was performed, and multivariable models were transformed into nomograms. Training and validation sets were based on results from 3 European and 2 non-European centres, respectively.
Results:
The training and validation set included 940 and 420 patients, respectively. The mean age at surgery, primary-versus-recurrent presentation, histology distribution, type of surgery, T category and type of adjuvant treatment were differently distributed in the training and validation set. In the training set, 5-year overall survival and recurrence-free survival with a 95%-confidence interval were 72.7% (69.5-76.0%) and 66.4% (63.1-69.8%), respectively, significantly varying with histology. At multivariable analyses, age, gender, previous treatment, the extent of resection on the cranial, lateral and posterolateral axes, grade/subtype, T category, nodal status, margin status and adjuvant treatment were all associated with different prognostic outcomes, displaying a heterogeneous significance and effect size according to histology. The internal and external validation of nomograms was satisfactory (optimism-corrected C-index >0.7 and cumulative area under curve >0.7) for all histologies but mucosal melanoma.
Conclusions:
Outcomes of TES-based treatment of sinonasal cancers vary substantially with histology. This large, non-population-based study provides benchmark data on the prognosis of sinonasal cancers that are deemed suitable for treatment including TES.
