Predictive Value of Motor Evoked Potential Monitoring during Surgery of Unruptured Anterior Circulation Cerebral Aneurysms

OBJECTIVE AND BACKGROUND: Surgery of unruptured aneurysms is always a great challenge to neurovascular surgeons because no postoperative neurological deficits should be expected postoperatively as the patients are fully asymptomatic before the surgery. Here, we present our experience with selective motor evoked potential (MEP) monitoring of our patients in a 2-year time window. PATIENTS AND METHODS: From 2012 to 2014, 27 patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysms were operated in our institute with the help of MEP monitoring. All patients underwent endoscope-assisted microsurgery with pre- and post-clipping indocyanine green angiography. RESULTS: In this period, no mortality was observed, but 18.5% of the patients developed postoperative deficits which showed good recovery in all cases. Overall, MEP showed about 90% accuracy in predicting postoperative deficits. CONCLUSIONS: MEP as a part of multimodality monitoring of aneurysm surgeries is a valuable tool to improve the outcome. However, we should know its limitations as its results are not always consistent with the outcome.