Abstract
Background: Giant intracranial meningiomas (GIMs) are extremely rare and are usually considered arduous to resect totally with poorer prognosis. The real mechanisms by which a meningioma can grow to be defined as "giant" are unknown, as well as the real biological , radiological profile and the different outcomes.Methods: We performed a retrospective review of a consecutive series of surgically-treated patients suffering from intracranial Meningioma. All the patients were assigned on the ground of the preoperative imaging to the Giant and Medium/Large Meningiomas. We investigated whether the presence large diameter on radiological diagnosis is indicative for different mortality rate, grading, characteristic and clinical/neurological outcome.Results: The study shows that surgically treated giant meningiomas have a higher risk of developing complications in the postoperative phase (Chi square= 11.121, dF=1, p=0.001). The direct proportional relationship between peritumoral brain edema (PBE) volume and tumor volume was present only in the medium/large group and was not present in the giant meningioma group. When comparing the degree of performance there is a statistically significant difference between localization and KPS immediately postoperatively (p=0.04) particularly for sphenopetroclival meningiomas (p=0.071), and partially with GIM of the olfactory groove with arterial encasement. The most frequently encountered complications include the occurrence of ischemia (p=0.049), infection (p=0.03), and the occurrence of postoperative seizures.Conclusions: We identified that the major surgical risk factor for GIMs is location, where the petro-clival region and, to a lesser extent the anterior basicranium offer a greater risk of neurovascular involvement and arterial encasement. On other hand, the risk correlated with PBE is poorer in GIM although there is a well-noted correlation between the Edema volume and outcome in meningiomas.