Awake craniotomy is becoming more popular as a neurosurgical technique that allows for increased tumor resection and decreased postoperative neurologic morbidity. This technique, however, presents many challenges to both the neurosurgeon and anesthetist. An ASA class II, 37-year-old man with recurrent oligodendroglioma presented for repeated craniotomy. Prior craniotomy under general anesthesia...

Cortical mapping has demonstrated a wide variability in the location of areas controlling speech, memory, motor and sensory function. These regions of the cortex, often referred to as eloquent cortex, can be near areas of epileptic foci or pathologic lesions, making the surgical resection of these lesions difficult. Optimal assessment of eloquent cortex function during a craniotomy often requir...

We report the case of a 39-year-old male with complex cyanotic congenital heart disease undergoing emergency craniotomy for a cerebral abscess. Maintenance of intraoperative hemodynamic stability and adequate tissue oxygenation during anesthesia may be challenging in patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease. In this case, we decided to perform the surgery as an awake craniotomy after int...

Depressed patients with brain tumors are often not referred to awake craniotomy because of concern of uncooperation which may increase the risk of perioperative complications. This report describes an interesting case of Awake Craniotomy for frontal lobe glioma in 41 year old woman undergoing language and motor mapping intra-operatively. As she was fearful and apprehensive and was on antidepres...

BACKGROUND Surgical stress triggers an inflammatory response and releases mediators into human plasma such as interleukins (ILs). Awake craniotomy and craniotomy performed under general anesthesia may be associated with different levels of stress. Our aim was to investigate whether those procedures cause different inflammatory responses. METHODS Twenty patients undergoing craniotomy under gen...

In this work, some case studies were conducted to classify several kinds of hand motions from electrocorticography (ECoG) signals during intraoperative awake craniotomy & extraoperative seizure monitoring processes. Four subjects (P1, P2 with intractable epilepsy during seizure monitoring and P3, P4 with brain tumor during awake craniotomy) participated in the experiments. Subjects performed th...

CONTEXT Awake craniotomy is increasingly performed the world over. We share our experience of performing craniotomy awake with our anesthetic protocol. AIMS To evaluate and analyze the anesthesia records of the patients who underwent awake craniotomy at our institution. SETTINGS AND DESIGN University teaching hospital, Retrospective study. MATERIALS AND METHODS We reviewed records of the ...

Background: The importance of monitoring cognition during awake craniotomy has been well described in previous studies. The relevance of being coached during such a procedure has received less attention and questions still remain unanswered about what factors are the most important herein. Objective: The aim of this study was to qualitatively analyze what factors were, according to our patients...

Awake craniotomy is still in its evolutionary stage and is generally successful in a highly motivated patient. The attending anesthesiologist must ensure that patient is optimally sedated and pain free yet readily arousable. In addition, it is essential to have a Plan B and C ready in case the first one fails. We adopted awake craniotomy technique in a 33 yr old male patient undergoing excision...