Publications by authors named "Paola Lacroce"

High-grade gliomas are the most prevalent neurooncological desease in adults, their incidence increases with age, peaking in the seventh decade. This paper aims to address how to select patients for surgical resection by identifying pre-surgical predictors of 12-month mortality in newly diagnosed HGG patients aged ≥ 75 years. A prognostic score will be proposed to guide surgical decisions based on expected survival.

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Background: In surgical practice during endoscopic endonasal approach, growth hormone-secreting pituitary neuroendocrine tumor (GH-secreting PitNET) patients show morphologic differences in the nasal cavities and sinuses, leading to a narrower surgical field and a carotid prominence and potentially increasing the complexity of the surgical and the risk of complications. The aim of the study is to evaluate the anatomical differences of the sphenoid sinus between patients with GH-secreting PitNETs and patients with nonfunctioning pituitary neuroendocrine tumor (NF-PitNET) who underwent endoscopic endonasal approach.

Methods: This is a monocentric retrospective study conducted at the author's institution.

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Gliosarcomas (GS) are sporadic malignant tumors classified as a Glioblastoma (GBM) variant with IDH-wild type phenotype. It appears as a well-circumscribed lesion with a biphasic, glial, and metaplastic mesenchymal component. The current knowledge about GS comes from the limited literature.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study focuses on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the evaluation of glioblastoma (a type of brain tumor) through MRI imaging, which is crucial for clinical decisions and surgical planning.
  • - Researchers trained a segmentation algorithm on a dataset of 237 MRIs (71 preoperative and 166 postoperative) from patients with Grade IV Glioma to enhance the accuracy of tumor assessment before and after surgery.
  • - Results indicate that while the algorithm performed well in preoperative evaluation (DICE score of 91.09), its performance was lower in postoperative assessments (DICE score of 72.31), suggesting that AI can help mitigate issues related to low-quality MRI images.
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The retro-sigmoid approach (RA), widely used during different neurosurgical procedures, is burdened by the risk of injuries of the nerves that cross that region contributing to possible postoperative complications. By using, anatomage table (AT), a novel 3D anatomical visualization system, we described the nerves passing through the retromastoid area including the great occipital nerve (GON), the lesser occipital nerve (LON) and the great auricular nerve (GAN), and their courses from the origins, till terminal branches. Moreover, using dedicated software, we measured distances between the nerves and well-recognizable bony landmarks.

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