gms | German Medical Science

67th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)
Joint Meeting with the Korean Neurosurgical Society (KNS)

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

12 - 15 June 2016, Frankfurt am Main

True historical aspects in the first published meningioma surgery – Francesco Durante and his pioneering work

Meeting Abstract

Search Medline for

  • Santino Ottavio Tomasi - Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Christian Doppler Klinik, Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität Salzburg, Austria
  • Jürgen-Volker Anton - Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Christian Doppler Klinik, Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität Salzburg, Austria
  • Peter A. Winkler - Universitätsklinik für Neurochirurgie, Christian Doppler Klinik, Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität Salzburg, Austria

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 67. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC), 1. Joint Meeting mit der Koreanischen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (KNS). Frankfurt am Main, 12.-15.06.2016. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2016. DocMO.11.02

doi: 10.3205/16dgnc049, urn:nbn:de:0183-16dgnc0494

Published: June 8, 2016

© 2016 Tomasi et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.


Outline

Text

Objective: Francesco Durante was a Sicilian surgeon and his name is well known in the history of neurosurgery, because he performed the first intracranial meningioma operation. In this review the previous works present in literature with discordant informations were collected and analyzed in order to try to shine a light on the historical aspects of the first intracranial meningioma surgery.

Method: In Rome, on the 1st of June 1885, in the Hospital San Giacomo, Durante performed the operation that made him famous in the world. He removed successfully a left olfactory groove meningioma in a 35-year-old woman. After operation, the preoperative loss of olfactory function and memory persisted, and the preoperative displacement of the left eye was partially reduced. After 3 months, her mental faculties had gradually returned to normal, as well the olfactory function.

Results: The result of the microscopic examination was a fusocellular sarcoma originated from the dura mater, as Durante described in the article published in The Lancet in 1887. The outcome was good till 1896, when she was re-operated for a recurrence. After that, she was always in good condition till the last control in 1905, more than 20 years after the first surgery. In the history of the modern Neurosurgery, before Cushing introduced the term of “meningioma”, this operation performed by Francesco Durante could be considered the first operation of a skull base meningioma. Furthermore it is important to know that, although the evolution in the techniques, instruments and approaches in the surgery of the cranial base meningioma in the last century, the surgical technique used from Durante is the technique used still now in many cases of olfactory groove meningioma.

Conclusions: Through a deep analysis of the historical papers and the data of literature most probably the Sicilian surgeon Francesco Durante performed the first successful skull-base meningioma-surgery in 1885, before the term “meningioma” was coined. This event should be remembered in order to give the right recognition to Francesco Durante in the history of the meningioma-surgery.