Article
Clinical application of a videoscope for endoscopic neurosurgery
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Published: | May 8, 2006 |
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Objective: Recent innovations of instruments and techniques contributed to less invasive and safer surgery. The application of endoscopes to neurosurgery is representative. At present, endoscopes for neurosurgery are fiberscopes and these fiberscopes have some weakness in visibility due to this structure. Here, we report the clinical application of a videoscope for endoscopic neurosurgery.
Methods: At present, a neuro-videoscope has not been released, so we used a rhino-laryngo-videoscope (manufactured by Olympus Optical Co., Ltd., Japan). Five patients were operated using this videoscope. Three cases were pineal region tumours with hydrocephalus, one case a left middle fossa arachnoid cyst, and the last case a hydrocephalus due to obstruction of the foramen of Monroe. The specification of the videoscope is as follows: field of view 100Åã, depth of field 5-50mm, insertion tube outer diameter 5.1mm, bending section angulation range Up130Åã/Down130Åã, insertion tube working length 365mm.
Results: Using the videoscope, we performed third ventriculostomy with biopsy (three cases), fenestration of an arachnoid cyst (one case), and septostomy (one case). The videoscope provided us high quality endoscopic image equal to a lens-scope and it had flexibility like a fiberscope. We could perform all five endoscopic surgeries successfully using only the videoscope.
Conclusions: We reported our experience with the application of a videoscope for endoscopic neurosurgery. The high quality endoscopic image of the videoscope is equal to a lens scope. Bright and clear surgical view is directly linked to safety of surgery. We conclude that the videoscope is quite effective for endoscopic neurosurgery.