[Remarks on the tactics and technic of transsphenoidal surgery for suprasellar pituitary adenomas]

In case of large suprasellar hypophyseal adenomas, on which the author operates through the transphenoidal access after Cushing, he carries out peroperation air ventriculography. This enables him to demonstrate by means of the X-ray picture intensifier and a TV monitor the actuaL shape of the expansion during the operation, to visually control the tumour extirpation from the third ventricle and in this way make it safer. Ventriculography also enables the intraoperative appraisal of the radicality of the tumour extirpation. The artificially developed intracranial overpressure exerts a favourable influence on the radicality. None of the twenty patients operated on died from a hypothalamus lesion syndrome.