Craniopharyngiomas in the Elderly: The Crucial Influence of Tumor Topography on Surgical Risk Assessment

Classifying CPs within the overly vague, uninformative category "suprasellar" prevents gaining any true insight regarding the risks associated with the surgical procedure employed. Routine MRI obtained with conventional T1- and T2-weighted sequences along the midsagittal and coronal trans-infundibular planes allow an accurate and reliable preoperative definition of CP topography. CPs developing primarily within the infundibulum and/or tuberal region of the hypothalamus, as well as those wholly located within the 3V, should be distinguished preoperatively from those lesions originally expanding beneath the 3V floor (3VF), the true suprasellar tumors. Among adult patients, about 40% of CPs correspond to infundibulo-tuberal tumors expanding primarily within the 3VF, above an intact pituitary gland and stalk. This subgroup of CPs shows strong adherences to the surrounding hypothalamus, as they are embedded within a wide band of reactive gliotic tissue, usually infiltrated by microscopic finger-like solid cords of tumor tissue. In elderly patients, a significant proportion of CPs correspond to papillary tumors developing above an intact 3VF, usually showing small pedicle-like or sessile-like attachments to the infundibulum. With the current diagnostic MRI workup routinely employed for CPs, it is possible, for the majority of lesions, to preoperatively differentiate these topographical variants and predict the type of CP-hypothalamus relationship that will be found during surgery.