Neurological Outcome after Surgical Treatment of Intramedullary Spinal Cord Tumors

OBJECTIVE: Recently, surgical outcomes of patients with intramedullary spinal cord tumors (IMSCT) have been improved due to advances of medicine. The purposes of our study were to evaluate the recent neurological outcomes after surgical treatment of IMSCTs. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 69 patients who underwent surgical treatment for IMSCT in our hospital between 1998 and 2013. Patient's age, sex, histological origin and grade, tumor location, tumor extension, preoperative neurological state, initial presenting symptom, and extend of tumor resection were analyzed to evaluate predictive factors that affect postoperative functional outcome. RESULTS: The neurological states at last follow-up were improved in 16 patients (23.2%), unchanged in 47 (68.1%), aggravated in 6 (8.7%). In all patients, the functional outcomes were good in 52 patients (75.4%), fair in 10 (14.5%), poor in 7 (10.1%). Preoperative good neurological state was the strongest positive predictor of good functional outcome (p<0.05). In tumor location, functional outcomes of thoracic tumors were poor than those in cervical and conus medullaris region (p=0.011). High-grade tumor shows poor outcome compare to low-grade tumor (p=0.03). CONCLUSION: The most reliable predicting factor of surgical outcome was the preoperative neurological state. In addition, IMSCTs in thoracic region and high-grade tumor showed relatively bad outcome and had a risk of postoperative morbidity.