Management of Intracranial Arachnoid Cysts

Cho, Dong; Hwang, Young Soon; Moon, Jae Gon; Kim, Han Kyu; Lee, Hwa Dong

Abstract

The authors have operated on fifteen cases of intracranial arachnoid cyst during the last 4 years. Among them, eleven cases of middle cranial fossa arachnoid cyst have undergone uniformly cystoperitoneal shunt. The craniotomy and fenestration(open surgery) was performed in three cases which located in quadrigeminal cistern(1 case) and harvored other combined problems(2 cases, intracystic hemorrhage and exophthalmos due to defect of lateral orbital wall respectively). A case of intraventricular arachnoid cyst was managed by ventriculocystostomy. All of above procedures showed good clinical and radiological results with acceptable morbidity and no mortality. With these observation, we thought as follows : 1) In middle cranial fossa cysts, cystoperitoneal shunt is sufficient as the first choice of operative intervention because it revealed good results with low morbidity and negligible complications. 2) Open surgery seems to be indicated only in deep seated cyst around brainsterm where the introduction of shunt catheter is difficult and dangerous and in cyst combinind other problems necessitating surgical intervation also.