Endoscopic endonasal approach for isolated subarachnoid neurocysticercosis in basal cisterns and its complications: illustrative case.

BACKGROUND: Neurocysticercosis (NCC) is an infectious parasitic disease in which humans are the middle host in the life cycle of Taenia solium. It is currently considered to be a neglected tropical disease. According to their location, cysts can cause epilepsy, hydrocephalus, arachnoiditis, and intracranial hypertension. The subarachnoid is the rarest and most morbid form among all forms of NCC presentation. OBSERVATIONS: The authors report an odd case of subarachnoid NCC (SUBNCC). It was treated with expanded endoscopic endonasal surgery. Unfortunately, the patient developed a high-output nasal leak and meningitis after cyst removal, which demanded additional surgical procedures. Nonetheless, the patient showed a good clinical outcome after surgical interventions. LESSONS: Endoscopic endonasal approach of SUBNCC can be safe and curative. Neverthless, the presented report shows that severe complications can arise from the procedure. The authors hypothesized that placing an early cerebrospinal shunt would reduce the patient's morbidity before difficulties arose.

Semidirect targeting-based stereotactic mesencephalotomy for the treatment of refractory pain: a case series.

OBJECTIVE: One of the few resources for treating medically intractable pain is ablative surgery, but its indications have fallen dramatically over the last decades. One such procedure is mesencephalotomy. This study aims to determine current risks and benefits of MR-guided semidirect targeting-based stereotactic mesencephalotomy. METHODS: This was a retrospective study based on a review of the medical records of 22 patients with nociceptive (n = 5), neuropathic (n = 10), or mixed (n = 7) refractory pain treated with unilateral mesencephalotomy alone (17 patients) or associated with bilateral anterior cingulotomy (5 patients) between 2014 and 2021 in the authors' institutions. The confidence interval adopted in this study was 95%. RESULTS: The sample included 12 women and 10 men with ages ranging from 23 to 80 years (mean 55.1 ± 17.1 years). Using MR-guided semidirect targeting, the following structures were targeted: spinoreticulothalamic (neuropathic/mixed pain, n = 17), trigeminothalamic (nociceptive/mixed pain in the face, n = 5), and neospinothalamic (nociceptive/mixed pain in the body, n = 7) pathways. The most common response to macrostimulation was central heat/moderate discomfort. Radiofrequency thermocoagulation was made with 70°C-75°C/60 sec. A total of 86.3% (3 months) and 76.9% (12 months) of the patients achieved excellent or good results (improvement of pain > 50%), presenting with a significant mean pain relief of 80.1% at 3 months and 71.4% at 12 months postoperatively. The addition of bilateral anterior cingulotomy did not improve the results. Patients with upper limb, cervicobrachial, and face pain did significantly better than those with trunk pain. The worst results were seen in patients with neuropathic and/or trunk pain. The surgical failure (pain relief ≤ 25%) and recurrence rates were 9.1% each, apparently related to the use of lower lesioning parameters (70°C/60 sec) and to the presence of neuropathic and/or trunk pain. The morbidity rate was 8%, with both complications (vertical diplopia and confusion/agitation) happening in patients lesioned with 75°C/60 sec. There were no deaths in this series. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that contemporary stereotactic mesencephalotomy is an effective, relatively low-risk, and probably underused procedure for treating medically intractable pain. Careful semidirect determination of the target coordinates associated with close attention to electrical macrostimulation responses certainly plays an important role in avoiding complications in most of the procedures. A higher lesioning temperature (75°C) apparently prevents recurrence, but at the cost of an increased risk of complications.

Brachial plexus avulsion neuropathic refractory pain: association of spinal cord stimulation and DREZotomy for complex pain.

A 52-year-old male was involved in a car accident 30 years ago. He presented with complete motor paralysis of the left upper limb. This evolved into severe neuropathic pain (mainly shocking and burning sensation) distributed from C5 to T1 dermatomes. He was first treated with spinal cord stimulation (SCS), which did not show efficacy for pain control, maintaining high visual analog scale (VAS) scores. He then received complementary treatment with left cervical DREZotomy to mitigate suffering and preserve SCS function to control "mirror pain." The video can be found here: https://youtu.be/iTvbLAZ3odM.