Surgical Neuro-Oncology Functional Unit

Oncological surgery on an organ as important to people's quality of life as the brain is a highly delicate surgical speciality. The Institute's surgical neuro-oncology department always seeks to optimise the oncological-functional balance. In other words, the aim is to remove as much of the tumour as possible, but always optimising the potential impact on brain function with the greatest precision, taking particular care not to damage functional aspects of the brain that are particularly important for the patient's quality of life.

To do this, it is necessary to plan the surgeries precisely by defining the location of the tumour and its relationship to brain function. Surgeries performed with the patient awake to monitor language, sensory-motor cortex monitoring, advanced planning and neuronavigation, intraoperative imaging, tumour marking with fluorescence microscopy systems, and more recently laser ablation for the minimally invasive treatment of brain tumours and radionecrosis are examples of the tools at our disposal. The neurosurgery department at the Institute of Neurosciences is a pioneer at the national level and a leading expert in all of the aforementioned techniques.

PROGRAMMES

• Surgery for brain tumours in language areas (awake surgery, pre- and intraoperative functional language mapping)
• Brain tumour surgery in sensory-motor areas
• Brain stem and basal ganglia surgery
• Laser ablation surgery for brain tumours
• Oncological fluorescence surgery
• Surgical planning in virtual reality and 3D printing