Radiosurgery of Glomus Tumors: Midterm Results

Radiosurgery for paraganglioma of the temporal bone

“…Forty percent of tumors decreased in size. Four single institutions23–26 (two included in the multicenter trial) have reported similar results with no local failures and improvement in symptoms in 30% to 60% of patients (Table 2). The current series includes the only marginal miss and the only in‐field recurrence reported to date.…”

“…As in other areas of radiotherapy, there is a continued effort to improve the treatment technique in a way that improves patient outcome, either by increasing tumor control or by decreasing RT side effects and/or complications. To this end, several institutions have treated low‐volume paragangliomas of the temporal bone with stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), in which a single dose of RT is delivered with a field arrangement such that the prescription dose conforms to the radiographic tumor volume 22–28. On the basis of the promising short‐term results with SRS at other institutions, we treated a small number of patients with SRS for temporal bone paraganglioma at the University of Florida.…”

Role of radiosurgery in the management of glomus tumors

“…In addition, surgery has been associated with significant morbidity with neurovascular complications in up to 60% of cases and mortality in 1.6% . Embolization can reduce tumor vascularization, however, it cannot be considered to be a curative treatment, but rather a preoperative surgical adjunct . Different radiation techniques, such as external beam radiotherapy (EBRT), fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy, and stereotactic radiosurgery, have shown their utility in the treatment of these tumors.…”

Transarterial Embolization of Vascular Tumors in the Head and Neck

“…Reported experience with radiotherapy consists mostly of adjuvant radiotherapy in the management of malignant paragangliomas. Gamma knife radiosurgery has been successful for tumors near the skull base 5,6 but is problematic in the neck because of motion. Although primary embolization without surgery has been reported to produce regression of tumor, [7][8][9] no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the tiny number of published cases.…”