Skull base tumours are nightmare for neurosurgeons due to the close relationship to important neurovascular structures, the margin of error is so little even a millimetre difference may cause high morbidity and lethality. Common names include clival chordoma, petroclival meningioma, glomus tumours which are all notorious.
To tackle these conditions, we need conjoint effort from different parties including experienced skull base Neurosurgeons, Head and Neck doctors to enhance exposure if tumour involving oral or upper cervical region, Ear Nose and Throat team in case the tumour involved paranasal sinuses, Plastic team whenever flap reconstruction is needed, Orthopaedic colleagues if the cervical spine stability is a concern or Oro-maxillo-facial team when denture is affected. They are all indispensable and crucial to make the surgery successful.
Nowadays, with new technology like 3D Printing we can hold the structure in our hand for better visualization and pre-operative planning before excising it, accurate Neuro-navigation system can also guide us the best entry route and minimize the unnecessary damage to healthy tissue, Microscope with blood flow estimation gadget helps us to evaluate the blood supply to tumour, DSA within Hybrid theatre let us achieve much less bleeding with pre-operative tumour embolization. Last but not least, as a Neurosurgeon we also need to excel our skill with dissection laboratory training to master the skills of microsurgery and vessel anastamosis, will all these, we can turn inoperable to operable.
Department of Neurosurgery in Queen Mary Hospital as a tertiary referral centres of complex skull base tumour, is equipped with all the expertise and laboratory facilities, we have long history of achieving excellent result in skull base tumour surgery and will be reaching a higher level of standard with the coming state-of-art new block in 2024.
