Skull base tumors are a large number of primary lesions, ranging from benign neoplasms to malignancies, which have a close contact to the multiple eloquent structures of this area. Moreover, the skull base can be involved with tumors arising from the surrounding anatomical regions, as nasal and paranasal sinuses or other head and neck locations and finally it can be the site for cancers metastasis.

Nowadays, multiple innovations are being developed to diagnose and treat these neoplasms effectively. Indeed, at one hand neuroradiological imaging is proving a more and more accurate analysis of tumor relationship with the anatomical structures. On the other, the development of targeted and minimally invasive surgical approaches, together with advanced radiation and chemo-therapies, are revolutionizing this field.

The aim of this issue is to present the most recent and advanced innovations in the treatment of skull base tumors from laboratory bench to patient’s bed. This topic aims to provide an updated overview of the current state-of-the-art and ongoing research, for differential diagnosis, imaging techniques, surgical indications, outcomes and follow-up of skull base tumors. Indeed, advances in images technologies are allowing a better morphological and even functionally or metabolically evaluation. Also, radiomics and genomics are recently contributing to improve our understanding of skull base tumors, leading to a better profiling of tumor biology. Recent implementations of innovative surgical technique and radiation and oncological therapies have allowed to more effective treatments, resulting in improved outcomes for patients. Moreover, several technologies have been developed to enlarge and optimize the treatment options for these patients. Such recent evolutions for skull base tumors are radically changing this field, which involves neurosurgeons, ENT surgeons, maxillo-facial surgeons, neuroradiologists, radiation and medical oncologists and basic scientists.

The types of manuscripts accepted for this topic include Original Research, Case Series, Technical Note, and Review. Particularly, the topics of interest include, but are not limited to current indications, outcomes and future perspectives of:

- Surgical Approaches

- Pre-surgical Embolization

- Techniques used to reconstruct defects after transcranial and EEA resection

- New imaging techniques and appropriate protocols to evaluate skull base tumors, differentiating from inflammatory disease and determine its relationship to neurovascular structures

- Radiation and medical oncological treatments

- Translational research in development of technology in complementary healthcare fields (i.e., biology, genetics, bioengineering, regenerative medicine, navigation systems and robotics)

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (clinical 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.

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