显微外科治疗大及巨大垂体腺瘤手术入路的探讨

目的 探讨显微外科治疗大及巨大垂体腺瘤手术方法的选择。方法 对CT或MRI证实的56例大及巨大垂体腺瘤，采用经蝶入路或经颅入路两种手术方法，在显微镜下切除肿瘤。结果 经蝶手术18例，全切除12例，次全切除6例，无一例死亡。经颅采用翼点或经额入路显微手术治疗38例，经额手术25例，全切除22例，次全切2例，部分切除1例，其中1例死亡．原因不明；经翼点13例，全切除10例，次全切2例，部分切除1例，无一例死亡。结论 采用显微外科技术，针对肿瘤的特点选择不同的手术入路是提高垂体腺瘤全切率、降低死亡率的关键。     

经蝶辅助内窥镜切除大型垂体腺瘤

目的：介绍和评价1993年至2002年内经蝶入路显微外科辅助内窥镜切除138例大型垂体腺瘤的手术操作技术及经验。方法：138例大型垂体腺瘤，男性66例，女性72例。手术采用经蝶显微外科辅助内窥镜。结果：本组全切肿瘤109例，占78.9％。结论：经蝶显微手术仍是一种较为实用手术，显微外科辅助内窥镜可提高大型垂体腺瘤的全切率。     

影响巨大垂体腺瘤手术疗效的几个问题探讨

目的 介绍56例巨大垂体腺瘤显微外科手术治疗经验，探讨影响手术疗效的几个问题。方法 回顾性分析56例巨大垂体腺瘤病人的临床资料。据肿瘤的生长方向及部位分为四型，据此分别采用经蝶、经额下、额下经蝶、扩大经蝶、扩大额下硬膜外、额下一翼点等10种入路进行显微手术。重点介绍手术入路的选择及注意事项。结果 56例巨大垂体腺瘤全切29例，近全切20例，大部分切除7例，无死亡。结论 依据巨大垂体腺瘤的不同位置及生长方向选择适当的手术入路、掌握手术时机以及术后辅以放疗是提高手术疗效的重要手段。     

垂体腺瘤的显微外科治疗

目的探讨外科治疗垂体腺瘤显微手术方法的选择。方法对CT或MRI证实的65例垂体腺瘤，采用经蝶入路或经翼点入路两种手术方法，在显微镜下切除肿瘤。结果经蝶手术44例，全切除29例，次全切除15例；无1例死亡。经翼点入路显微手术21例，全切除13例，次全切5例，部分切除3例；死亡1例(死于多器官功能衰竭)。结论采用显微外科技术，针对肿瘤的特点选择不同的手术入路是提高垂体腺瘤全切率、降低死亡率的关键。     

大型和巨大型垂体腺瘤经蝶显微外科治疗的疗效及处理策略

目的 探讨大型和巨大型垂体腺瘤手术入路的选择和处理策略。方法 回顾性总结1985—2001年收治的302例大型和巨大型垂体腺瘤临床资料和经蝶手术切除的疗效。结果 显微镜下全切除188例(62．3％)，次全切除68例，部分和大部分切除46例。手术并发症多为一过性，死亡5例(1、66％)。术后动态随诊CT(MRI)173例，无肿瘤残余92例(53．2％)。随诊期(平均22．5个月)视力、视野改善190例(95．5％)，激素分泌性垂体腺瘤相应激素水平大部分正常或不同程度下降。结论 绝大部分本类型肿瘤均可首选经蝶手术切除。术后定期随诊，如残余肿瘤明显或再生长、复发，根据具体情况经颅或再次经蝶手术和(或)辅以放疗和溴隐亭等药物治疗。     

经蝶窦显微手术治疗垂体巨腺瘤：附54例报告

报告５４例直径≥４ｃｍ的垂体巨腺瘤经蝶窦显微手术治疗结果。肿瘤近全切除４５例，大部分切除５例，部分切除４例，无死亡。作者体会对垂体巨腺瘤而言，经蝶窦显微手术不但比经颅手术安全，而且切除范围也比经颅手术彻底，对视觉功能的改善更优于经颅手术。     

扩大双侧额下联合经蝶入路显微切除巨大型垂体腺瘤

目的探讨扩大双侧额下联合经蝶入路显微手术切除巨大型垂体腺瘤的临床疗效。方法采用扩大双侧额下入路并联合硬膜外经蝶窦显微手术切除13例巨大型垂体腺瘤,对侵入蝶窦内及中上斜坡区的肿瘤,由硬膜外剥离暴露并磨除蝶骨平台切除肿瘤。结果13例巨大型垂体腺瘤全切除6例,近全切除5例,大部分切除2例,无重残及死亡病例。结论经该入路行显微手术能有效地提高巨大型垂体腺瘤的全切除率。     

垂体腺瘤的远期疗效分析和治疗选择探讨

目的　分析影响垂体腺瘤预后的因素并探讨治疗方法的选择。方法　对经手术治疗的３０８ 例垂体腺瘤中的１５５ 例进行了２ 年以上的随访和远期疗效评价,分别就肿瘤大小、肿瘤类型、手术方式、肿瘤切除范围以及放射治疗对预后的影响作了分析。结果　垂体微腺瘤和小腺瘤的疗效优于大腺瘤和巨大腺瘤,分泌性腺瘤的疗效优于非分泌性腺瘤,肿瘤全切除的疗效优于次全切除和部分切除,大腺瘤经蝶入路的疗效优于经额入路。结论　肿瘤大小和切除范围是影响预后的主要因素。微、小腺瘤选择经蝶入路最佳,大腺瘤尽量采用经蝶入路,巨大腺瘤则是以鞍上下联合入路为宜。     

经蝶窦显微手术治疗垂体巨腺瘤(附34例报告)

目的 报告34例直径≥4cm的垂体巨腺瘤经蝶窦显微手术治疗方法和结果。方法 总结垂体巨腺瘤的临床表现，神经影像学特征及显微手术方法和术后处理。结果 肿瘤近全切除28例，大部切除4例，部分切除2例，无死亡。结论 本会对垂体巨腺瘤而言，经蝶窦显微手术不但比经颅手术安全，而且切除范围也比经颅手术彻底，对视觉功能的改善更优于经颅手术，鞍底的修复亦非常重要。     

巨大垂体腺瘤二次经蝶手术30例分析

目的探讨巨大垂体腺瘤二次经蝶手术策略、技巧及术后并发症处理方法。方法回顾性分析30例巨大垂体腺瘤二次经蝶手术病人的临床资料,对手术切除程度、术后症状、激素水平变化及并发症处理等进行总结和分析。结果术后病理结果显示：无功能性腺瘤22例,其中无功能性促肾上腺皮质激素腺瘤1例;生长激素腺瘤8例。功能性垂体腺瘤病人术后激素水平均不同程度下降。术后并发一过性尿崩症9例,脑脊液鼻漏4例,无死亡或严重并发症病例。术后3个月行MRI复查17例,肿瘤全切除4例,次全切除7例。部分切除6例。结论对单纯经蝶或经颅入路均无法一期全切除或术后随访肿瘤复发的巨大垂体腺瘤病例．二次经蝶手术应作为首选治疗方法。     

Diagnostic Difficulties and Treatment Implications

Summary: Differentiation between types of epileptic seizures has been aided in recent years by the introduction of intensive neurodiagnostic techniques and the development of increasingly detailed classification systems. Paradoxically, these developments have not simplified the task of matching the appropriate antiepileptic drug to a particular seizure type. It is reasonable to assume that anticonvulsant drugs will have different effects on different types of seizures, but faulty, circular reasoning can enter the picture if one also assumes that responses of seizures to different drugs signify different seizure types. There are several examples of differential diagnoses that can fall prey to this problem, including the diagnosis between partial seizures with secondary generalization and generalized tonic-clonic seizures, and the diagnosis between complex partial seizures and absence seizures with automatisms, among others. Considerations of etiology in future classification systems can further complicate the problem: should one then choose an anticonvulsant drug on the basis of individual seizure type or on the basis of the type of epilepsy? Ramifications of this issue extend even to the drug approval process. Official sanction is not given for use of a drug for a seizure type not included in the original efficacy studies, even if later scientific evidence shows that seizure type to be related to a type that is included. New trials must be undertaken. These problems arise from how we choose to classify seizures.     

Cognitive Dysfunction Associated with Antiepileptic Drug Therapy

Summary: Epilepsy is frequently associated with cognitive dysfunction. However, the reasons for this correlation are unclear. Possible influential factors include patient age; duration, frequency, etiology, and type of seizures; hereditary factors; psychosocial issues; and antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy. Whereas many of these factors are beyond the physician's control, AED therapy is one element that can be addressed in treatment decisions by recognizing the potential cognitive effects of particular AEDs. For example, phenobarbital impairs memory and concentration; phenytoin affects attention, problem solving ability, and performance of visuomotor tasks. In contrast, carbamazepine may affect concentration, while valproate would appear to have minimal effects on cognition. Moreover, cognitive effects of AEDs are amplified with coadministration of multiple anticonvulsants (polytherapy). A review of studies on the cognitive effects of monotherapy with AEDs, as opposed to those of polytherapy, provides evidence that drug-related cognitive dysfunction can be reversed if patients are switched to a simpler therapeutic regimen. Future research should be directed toward developing reliable measures for assessing and monitoring cognition, and understanding the particular cognitive side effects of each AED. Physicians also need to revise their opinions about which side effects are "tolerable" for epileptic patients.     

Epilepsy and anomalies of neuronal migration: MRI and clinical aspects

Neuronal migration disorders are the result of disturbed brain development. In such disorders, neurons are abnormally located. In diagnosing these conditions, magnetic resonance imaging is superior to any other imaging technique. This enables us to improve our knowledge of the clinical correlates of neuronal migration. With reference to migrational disorder, a retrospective study of all 303 patients with epileptic seizures referred for magnetic resonance imaging during a 3-year period was performed, 13 patients (aged 12-41, mean age 27) were identified. They represent 4.3% of the entire study group. Of the patients with known epilepsy, 6.7% and of the mentally retarded, 13.7% had migrational disorders. Four patients had schizencephaly as the dominant finding, one was classified as hemimegalencephaly, 2 had isolated heterotopias, and 6 had localized pachy- and/or poly-microgyria. The clinical pictures are complex. Ectopias of grey matter are recognised foci of epilepsy, but from an epileptological and a clinical viewpoint little attention has been given to these disorders. The present study shows that malmigration is not rare in epilepsy patients, especially not in the mentally retarded.     

Carbamazepine Efficacy in Adults With Partial and Generalized Tonic-Clonic Seizures

Summary: Carbamazepine and phenytoin are drugs of choice in initial monotherapy for adult partial and secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures. These designations reflect the results of the Veterans Administration Epilepsy Cooperative Study Group of 1985. An earlier comparative study of carbamazepine and phenytoin by Ramsay and associates found both drugs equally effective in controlling new-onset seizures. Among the advantages of carbamazepine is that it causes relatively few cognitive and dysmorphic side effects. Its disadvantages are its unavailability in parenteral formulation and its metabolic autoinduction. The latter must be compensated for by planned dosage increases to maintain therapeutic plasma steady-state levels during the first 2 or 3 months of treatment. Carbamazepine is judged a drug of choice in the treatment of these secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures, and the drug of choice in children, adolescents, and women susceptible to the dysmorphic side effects associated with other anticonvulsant agents.     

Etiologic and Preventive Aspects of Epilepsy in the Child–Bridging the Gap Between Laboratory and Clinic

Summary: Four broad categories of basic phenomena are pertinent to developing ways to prevent epilepsy. These include mechanisms of epileptogenesis, ictal initiation and temporary entrainment by the seizure discharge of normally functioning brain, seizure propagation, and control mechanisms that function both to restrain the cascade of epileptic events culminating in a seizure and to arrest the epileptic event and restore the interictal state. In newborns and children, hypoxia-ischemia is a major factor leading to epileptogenesis, and several schemes are proposed to classify, quantify, and prevent hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. Control mechanisms must be better understood in order to develop prophylactic recommendations for epilepsy, and an experimental model of "kindling antagonism" may increase our understanding of these. Programs of prevention of seizures in children will evolve only if basic researchers and clinicians work productively together to develop an adequate understanding of factors important in epileptogenesis and antiepileptogenic control mechanisms.     

Predisposing and Causative Factors in Childhood Epilepsy

Summary: We review information from large studies of defined populations, examining the role of known factors and especially of prenatal and perinatal factors in contributing to nonfebrile seizure disorders of early childhood. We depend especially, but not exclusively, on the recently completed analyses from the Collaborative Perinatal Project of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, the NCPP. About 4% of children in the NCPP who had at least one non-febrile nonsymptomatic seizure by the age of 7 years had a previous seizure during acute neurologic illness, such as meningitis or during the acute illness after trauma. Many such seizures should potentially be preventable. Of children with seizures, 10% had had a neonatal seizure and 13% had had a febrile seizure. Among the hundreds of prenatal and perinatal factors explored as predictors of childhood seizure disorders, the principal predictors identified were congenital malformations of the fetus, cerebral and noncerebral; family history of certain neurologic disorders; and neonatal seizures. In agreement with the British National Child Development Study, labor and delivery factors in the NCPP appeared to contribute very little to childhood seizure disorders. Maldevelopment, rather than damage at birth to an initially intact nervous system, appeared to be the more common mechanism. Most seizure disorders of early childhood remained unexplained by the large set of prenatal and perinatal characteristics examined.     

Classification of methods in transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES) and evolving strategy from historical approaches to contemporary innovations

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES) encompasses all methods of non-invasive current application to the brain used in research and clinical practice. We present the first comprehensive and technical review, explaining the evolution of tES in both terminology and dosage over the past 100 years of research to present day. Current transcranial Pulsed Current Stimulation (tPCS) approaches such as Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) descended from Electrosleep (ES) through Cranial Electro-stimulation Therapy (CET), Transcerebral Electrotherapy (TCET), and NeuroElectric Therapy (NET) while others like Transcutaneous Cranial Electrical Stimulation (TCES) descended from Electroanesthesia (EA) through Limoge, and Interferential Stimulation. Prior to a contemporary resurgence in interest, variations of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation were explored intermittently, including Polarizing current, Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), and Transcranial Micropolarization. The development of these approaches alongside Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and pharmacological developments are considered. Both the roots and unique features of contemporary approaches such as transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) and transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) are discussed. Trends and incremental developments in electrode montage and waveform spanning decades are presented leading to the present day. Commercial devices, seminal conferences, and regulatory decisions are noted. We conclude with six rules on how increasing medical and technological sophistication may now be leveraged for broader success and adoption of tES.     

Treatment Considerations in Anticonvulsant Monotherapy

Summary: The long-standing practice of polypharmacy in treating epilepsy is giving way to use of monotherapy. Monotherapy can improve seizure control as well as reduce the risk of serious idiosyncratic reactions, dose-related side effects, and complex drug interactions. Monotherapy also offers improved compliance and cost-effectiveness. The basis of monotherapy is accurate diagnosis and assessment of the patient's seizure type(s), followed by selection of a single appropriate anticonvulsant drug. Many patients currently treated with multiple anticonvulsants can be successfully converted to monotherapy with a carefully monitored program in which troublesome and redundant drugs are gradually withdrawn from the therapeutic regimen.     

Anticonvulsant Drugs and Cognitive Function: A Review of the Literature

Summary: Alterations of cognitive function are separate from disturbances of behavior seen in association with epilepsy. The nature of the cognitive disability may to a certain extent depend on the seizure type. Partial seizures, mainly derived from a temporal lobe focus, impair memory tasks, while generalized seizures seem to have more effect on attentional abilities. A number of studies, reviewed in this paper, suggest that anticonvulsant drugs further impair cognitive function. Maximal impairments are seen in patients receiving polytherapy: rationalization of polytherapy improves cognitive abilities. Studies in children and adults have allowed differentiation of the effects of various commonly used antiepileptic agents. Maximal cognitive deficits are seen with. phenytoin, while phenobarbital and sodium valproate induce moderate disturbances, and carbamazepine seems relatively free from such toxicity. Further research is needed on the interrelationship between types of seizure disorders, types of anticonvulsant medications, and cognitive function.     

Dextromethorphan: Cellular Effects Reducing Neuronal Hyperactivity

Summary: Dextromethorphan is a dextrorotary morphinan without affinity for opioid receptors, commonly used as an antitussive medication. During the past 5 years, interest in the compound and its demethylated derivative, dextrorphan, has been revived because additional neuroprotective and an-tiepileptic properties were found in in vitro studies, animal experiments, and a few clinical cases. Both morphinans are able to inhibit N -methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor channels and voltage-operated calcium and sodium channels with different potencies. The inhibition of the NMDA receptor is believed to be the predominant mechanism of action responsible for the anticonvulsant and neuroprotective properties of the compounds.