Post-operative morbidity ensuing surgery for insular gliomas: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The surgical resection of insular gliomas remains a challenge. Middle cerebral artery perforating arteries and deep functional pathways affect the extent of resection and the rate of post-operative morbidity. The authors performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature examining early and permanent post-operative deficits in patients who underwent resection of insular gliomas using awake craniotomy with direct electrical stimulation (DES) versus surgery under general anesthesia. A systematic search of three databases was performed for studies published between 1990 and 2018. Random-effect meta-analysis was used to pool the rate of early and permanent post-operative deficits. Random-effect meta-regression was used to examine the association between the rate of post-operative deficit and the anesthesia protocol. We included eight studies evaluating 227 patients with insular glioma. The rate of permanent sequelae was lower after awake craniotomy with DES (3.5% vs 15.7%; P = .001), and early deficits were lower after surgery under general anesthesia (27.3% vs 47.7%; P = .04). Awake surgery was significantly more common among patients with tumor located within the dominant hemisphere ( P