Surgical Treatment of Recurrent Craniopharyngioma

Any neurosurgeon can’t avoid the tumor recurrence within the treatment of craniopharyngiomas. In this chapter, we focused on the description of the clinical manifestation, surgical strategy and prognosis of recurrent CP. Especially, the growth pattern of recurrent tumor as compared to the primary morphological features was emphasized and discussed. The influences of the first surgery or treatment strategy (pallilate or radical) were proposed based on the clinical casese analysis. As our opinion, the recurrent CP can be divided into 1) Intrasellar recurrence of Infradiaphgragmatic tumor, and 2) Suprasellar infundibulo-tuberal recurrence. Correspondingly, the different treatment strategies were also summarized. We thought for intrasellar recurrent, more radical surgery should be taken. While for the infundibulo-tuberal recurrence casued by palliative first surgery, more radical surgery was still the first choise. However, if radical total removal was selected in the first surgery, the repeated operation must be paid more attention.

Keywords: Craniopharyngioma, Surgical treatment, Tumor recurrent.