[Surgery of metastatic brain tumors with new surgical instruments]

The risk of damages of neurological function by the operation of metastatic brain tumors was reduced considerably after introduction of neurosurgical apparatuses, such as ultrasonograph, ultrasonic surgical aspirator and laser scalpel. Of these, ultrasonograph is useful to indicate the exact location of brain tumor at real time during the operation. Ultrasonic surgical aspirator reduced the risk of damage on important brain structures due to the selectivity of fragmentation and the safety of the dissection in the vicinity of important vessels and nerve tissues. Laser scalpel is also useful to extirpate the hemorrhagic tumor with hard consistency. Cases introduced in this paper were: case 1, brain metastasis from lung cancer located just under the left motor area in brain; case 2, metastasis with abundant neovascularization from renal cancer to orbital cavity which showed invasion to orbital roof and frontal bone; case 3, radiation induced sarcoma after the treatment of retinoblastoma; case 4, a large cerebellar metastatic tumor; case 5, neurogenic sarcoma which were successfully removed by using one of or combination of ultrasonograph, ultrasonic aspirator and laser scalpel. Advantage of these new instruments for the surgery on metastatic brain tumor was mentioned here. However, it is necessarily to get a custom before we use these apparatuses at operation efficiently.