NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mapping the language areas in the brain prior to surgery for brain tumors is an effective means to preserve essential language function, according to findings presented this week at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons annual meeting.
University of California, San Francisco neurosurgeon Dr. Nader Sanai reported his experience with language mapping in 250 consecutive patients with gliomas adjacent to or within the language pathway. Gliomas are the most frequent primary brain tumors in adults, accounting for 40 percent of all tumors and 78 percent of cancerous tumors.
"In resecting these gliomas, there is a high risk of damaging the person's language function and this is probably one of the most debilitating symptoms after brain surgery," Sanai noted in an interview with Reuters Health. "Awake language mapping is one technique to avoid this that has really been refined in the last several years."
Before surgery with language mapping, patients undergo a battery of neuropsychological tests to see if they are good candidates. "Some patients are unable to tolerate the whole experience of being awake during the operation; some are emotionally unable to handle it," Sanai said.
At the time of resection of the tumor, various sites on the cortex of the brain are stimulated to find the exact language sites so the neurosurgeon can avoid them, the researcher explained.
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