Publications by authors named "Lorenzo Bello"

Background: Supratotal-Resection (SpTR) is a promising surgical strategy in Lower-grade gliomas (LGGs). SpTR assessment, feasibility and distinctive features, as well as clinical benefit at first and second surgery and on overall-survival must be better characterized. The critical percentage of resection exceeding FLAIR margins to obtain clinical benefit and its impact on long-term functional performance are also undefined.

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Objective: Sexual functioning is a multifaceted aspect of human life that can be profoundly affected in patients with glioma. Most frequent symptoms include reduced sexual desire, difficulties in sexual arousal, or low satisfaction. Such symptoms may cause distress or interpersonal difficulties, inevitably resulting in negative outcomes on different domains of patients' quality of life.

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Background: Following surgery, patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma frequently enter clinical trials. Nuanced risk assessment is warranted to reduce imbalances between study arms. Here, we aimed (I) to analyze the interactive effects of residual tumor with clinical and molecular factors on outcome and (II) to define a postoperative risk assessment tool.

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Background: Data on human brain function obtained with direct electrical stimulation (DES) in neurosurgical patients have been recently integrated and combined with modern neuroimaging techniques, allowing a connectome-based approach fed by intraoperative DES data. Within this framework is crucial to develop reliable methods for spatial localization of DES-derived information to be integrated within the neuroimaging workflow.

New Method: To this aim, we applied the Kernel Density Estimation for modelling the distribution of DES sites from different patients into the MNI space.

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Background And Objectives: Patients with -mutant lower-grade glioma have a high frequency of seizures. We aimed to investigate the correlations between seizures and tumor/patient characteristics and the impact of surgery and adjuvant treatments (AT) on seizure control along the disease trajectory.

Methods: We retrospectively included patients with -mutant lower-grade glioma who underwent surgery at the neurosurgery divisions of the University of Turin and Milan and were treated at the Division of Neuro-Oncology of Turin.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied how the brain controls hand movements for grabbing things in both humans and monkeys using special techniques like brain scans.
  • They looked at research articles to find out what parts of the brain were active when people and monkeys grabbed objects.
  • The study aimed to connect what they learned about brain activity in these tests to real-life brain surgery where doctors need to know how to avoid important areas while operating.
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The treatment of glioblastoma (GBM) faces significant challenges due to the difficulty of delivering drugs through the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have emerged as potential carriers for targeted drug delivery to brain tumors. However, their use and distribution in the presence of an intact BBB and their ability to target GBM tissue are still under investigation.

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This study tests the generalisability of three Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) challenge models using a multi-center dataset of varying image quality and incomplete MRI datasets. In this retrospective study, DeepMedic, no-new-Unet (nn-Unet), and NVIDIA-net (nv-Net) were trained and tested using manual segmentations from preoperative MRI of glioblastoma (GBM) and low-grade gliomas (LGG) from the BraTS 2021 dataset (1251 in total), in addition to 275 GBM and 205 LGG acquired clinically across 12 hospitals worldwide. Data was split into 80% training, 5% validation, and 15% internal test data.

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Extent of resection after surgery is one of the main prognostic factors for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma. To achieve this, accurate segmentation and classification of residual tumor from post-operative MR images is essential. The current standard method for estimating it is subject to high inter- and intra-rater variability, and an automated method for segmentation of residual tumor in early post-operative MRI could lead to a more accurate estimation of extent of resection.

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Despite human's praxis abilities are unique among primates, comparative observations suggest that these cognitive motor skills could have emerged from exploitation and adaptation of phylogenetically older building blocks, namely the parieto-frontal networks subserving prehension and manipulation. Within this framework, investigating to which extent praxis and prehension-manipulation overlap and diverge within parieto-frontal circuits could help in understanding how human cognition shapes hand actions. This issue has never been investigated by combining lesion mapping and direct electrophysiological approaches in neurosurgical patients.

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Background: Resection of the contrast-enhancing (CE) tumor represents the standard of care in newly diagnosed glioblastoma. However, some tumors ultimately diagnosed as glioblastoma lack contrast enhancement and have a 'low-grade appearance' on imaging (non-CE glioblastoma). We aimed to (a) volumetrically define the value of non-CE tumor resection in the absence of contrast enhancement, and to (b) delineate outcome differences between glioblastoma patients with and without contrast enhancement.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the impact of re-resection on survival rates in patients with recurrent glioblastoma, using the RANO classification to assess the degree of tumor removal and its correlation with patient outcomes.
  • A cohort of 681 patients was analyzed, revealing that re-resection generally leads to longer survival, especially when minimal residual contrast-enhancing tumor remains post-surgery.
  • The findings support that "maximal resection" (class 2) offers better prognoses compared to "submaximal resection" (class 3), while "supramaximal resection" (class 1) does not improve survival and can result in postoperative complications.
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Introduction: Cortical and subcortical motor mapping has advanced the notion of maximal safe resection of intra-axial brain tumours, thereby preserving neurological functions as well as improving survival. Despite being an age-old and established neurosurgical procedure across the world, the strategy and techniques involved in motor mapping have a gamut of variation due to a lack of defined standard protocols.

Methods: We disseminated a structured survey among focused group of neurosurgeons with established practices involving brain mapping.

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Introduction: Adult-type diffuse gliomas are malignant primary brain tumors characterized by very poor prognosis. Dendritic cells (DCs) are key in priming antitumor effector functions in cancer, but their role in gliomas remains poorly understood.

Methods: In this study, we characterized tumor-infiltrating DCs (TIDCs) in adult patients with newly diagnosed diffuse gliomas by using multi-parametric flow cytometry and single-cell RNA sequencing.

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Over the past 10 years, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has shown significant benefits compared to conventional surgical techniques, with reduced trauma, shorter hospital stays, and shorter patient recovery times. In neurosurgical MIS procedures, inserting a straight tool (e.g.

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Objective: Safe resection of gliomas involving motor pathways in asleep-anesthesia requires the combination of brain mapping, to identify and spare essential motor sites, and continuous monitoring of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs), to detect possible vascular damage to the corticospinal tract (CST). MEP monitoring, according to intraoperative neurophysiology societies, is generally recommended by transcranial electrodes (TES), and no clear indications of direct cortical stimulation (DCS) or the preferential use of one of the two techniques based on the clinical context is available. The main aim of the study was to identify the best technique(s) based on different clinical conditions, evaluating the efficacy and prognostic value of both methodologies.

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For patients suffering from brain tumor, prognosis estimation and treatment decisions are made by a multidisciplinary team based on a set of preoperative MR scans. Currently, the lack of standardized and automatic methods for tumor detection and generation of clinical reports, incorporating a wide range of tumor characteristics, represents a major hurdle. In this study, we investigate the most occurring brain tumor types: glioblastomas, lower grade gliomas, meningiomas, and metastases, through four cohorts of up to 4,000 patients.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines inconsistent terminology in glioblastoma surgery and evaluates a proposed classification based on the extent of tumor resection.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 1,008 patients to correlate the volume of residual tumors post-surgery with patient outcomes.
  • Findings indicate that greater removal of non-contrast-enhancing (CE) tumors significantly improves survival and supports the use of defined "RANO categories" for better stratification in clinical trials.
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Many different methodologies and paradigms are available to guide surgery of supratentorial tumors with the aim to preserve quality of life of the patients and to increase the extent of tumor resection. Neurophysiologic monitoring techniques (such as different evoked potentials) may help to continuously assess functional integrity of the observed systems and warn about vascular injury. For neurophysiologic mapping methods, the focus is not only to preserve cortical sites, but also to prevent injury to subcortical pathways.

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Background: Multiple factors can affect the accuracy of neuronavigation, that is a relevant issue, particularly for frameless stereotactic procedures, where precision and optimal image-guidance is crucial for the surgical performance, workflow, and outcome.

Objective: To investigate the impact of AIRO Mobile Computer Tomography in frameless stereotactic approaches.

Methods: A retrospective study on 12 patients was performed.

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