Functional microsurgery of vestibular schwannomas

Abstract

The introduction of the operating microscope into otorhinolaryngology in the 1960s and into neurosurgery in 1968 [21] meant a breakthrough for these disciplines and brought about a fundamental change in a patient's chances of survival in general, and specifically in skull base surgery. Rates of morbidity were significantly improved by microsurgery [2, 27], but a functional technique for performing neurosurgery of skull base lesions was only developed 10-20 years later by implementing neuromonitoring [4, 20]. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.