About this Research Topic
Treatment of gliomas still presents several substantially controversial issues, such as the actual role of surgical radical resection, the impact of modern technology in terms of intraoperative monitoring, metabolic navigation and on real-time imaging. Also the role of less invasive surgical techniques, though it appears to be very promising, still awaits wide acceptance and validation as well as the role of technologically advanced radiation and immuno-chemotherapy protocols.
Neurosurgery has enjoyed significant advancements and successes in the management of most of the diseases of its competence in the last years, however the results of the management or certain subtypes of glioma, in particular of their most biologically aggressive forms, is still far from being satisfactory. In this specific field better understanding of tumour biology as well as multidisciplinary team wise efforts will be the clue for achieving significantly better results in the near future.
Aspects to be clarified exist also as far as more benign forms of glioma are concerned. Recently the biology of low-grade gliomas has been investigated in detail, and factors possibly predicting malignant transformation have been somehow identified. In this respect, indications for performing possibly radical removal in low-grade glioma patients have been widened. However, radical removal of these tumors which very often are visually very difficult - if not impossible - to be distinguished from normal brain tissue, is still not a universally accepted surgical policy because scientific proof that aggressive surgical behavior in low-grade glioma patients really prolongs their survival is still somehow lacking.
We will present an update of the current situation in terms of management of these tumors and will welcome other contributions as original research papers focusing on innovative treatment strategies. In particular contributions on the following topics will be welcome
-New insight on surgical techniques for improving safe radical resection and reducing invasiveness
-Trends in anesthesia and intraoperative functional monitoring
-Modern up-to-date diagnostic protocols with special reference to tumour recurrence
-Innovative treatment strategies': focused beam therapy, targeted local therapies etc.
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
Keywords: glioma, neuro-oncology, surgery, modern technology, surgical techniques
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