Postoperative Low-Flow Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak of Endoscopic Endonasal Transsphenoidal Surgery for Pituitary Adenoma: Wait and See, or Lumbar Drain?

To assess the effectiveness of continuous lumbar drainage (LD) for management of postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leaks after endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal approach for resection of pituitary adenoma. Three hundred eighty-four medical records of patients who were admitted to our institute during a 2.5-year period were retrospectively reviewed, 33 of them experienced low-flow cerebrospinal fluid leak postoperatively. If LD was used, all patients with low-flow cerebrospinal fluid leak were classified into 2 groups, lumbar drained group and conservatively treated group. The age, sex, management of cerebrospinal fluid leaks, and related complications were reviewed. Statistical comparisons between the 2 groups were made using SPSS 19.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY). The differences were considered statistically significant if the P value was less than 0.05. Thirty-three of 384 (8.6%) experienced low-flow postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leaks. Cured rate of cerebrospinal fluid leak was 94.4% (17/18) in continuous lumbar drained group, and 93.3% (14/15) in control group. There were 2 (11.2%) patients who developed meningitis in the LD group and 1 (5.6%) patient in the control group. One patient required endoscopic repair of skull base because of persistent cerebrospinal fluid leak in both groups, with the rates of 5.6% and 6.7%, respectively. There was no significant difference noted in each rate in both groups. Placement of LD may not be necessary for the management of low-flow postoperative cerebrospinal fluid leak after using endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal approach to pituitary adenoma.