A Postoperative Venous Hemorrhagic Infarction of Cerebellopontine Angle Tumor:1 Cases

The authors present a case of cerebrellar venous hemorrhagic infarction which developed after removal of a cerebellopontine angle meningioma. The clinical course was rapidly fatal inspite of an aggressive management including surgical decompression beginning from 30 minutes after complete recovery from anesthesia. The brain C-T scan showed flame-shaped subcortical hemorrhage which is known to be a typical finding of a venous hemorrhagic infarction. The causes may be two fold:One is the cautrization and resection of multiple petrosal veins which were inevitable because of a bleeding from the vein and the other is the venous congestion caused by the compression of an internal jugular vein in oblique supine position. Reminding of one or oth of the above possibilities whenever we are performing surgery around the superior petrosal vein may help us to prevent the rare but fatal complication of this kind.

Prognosis of the Parenchymal Brain Metastasis According to Primary-to-Metastatic Interval

The authors analyzed and compared three prognostic factors of the intraparenchymal metastatic brain tumors, regardless of therapeutic modalities, to evaluate the value of time-interval between diagnosis of primary cancer and brain metastasis as a prognostic factor. Our of the 109 patients of metastatic brain tumor admitted to Kosin Medical College from 1984 to 1991, 93 patients were included in this retrospective study. The survival time of these patients was statistically evaluated according to each prognostic factor. The results were as follows. Patients with mild or no neurological deficits and patients with moderate neurological deficits showed longer survival than the patients with severe neurological deficits(P<0.001). The presence of systemic metastasis at the time of diagnosis also significantly shortened overall survival(P<0.0095). Primary-to-metastatic interval did not significantly affect overall survival(P<0.6164), but the patients with brain metastasis detected within 1 year after diagnosis of the primary cancer had a longer median survival than those detected after 1 year(P<0.001). We conclude that the primary-to-metastatic interval is not valuable as a prognostic factor for intraparenchymal metastatic brain tumor, and further prospective study tailored to each specific condition will be needed for more accurate evaluation of prognostic factors.