Abstract
Clival chordomas are lesions located at the anterolateral aspect of the brainstem, involving the extradural and seldom the intradural spaces. These tumors have been historically accessed through posterolateral approaches, which offer a comfortable surgical corridor for this kind of lesions: indeed, the retrosigmoid approach is considered adequate for chordomas that involve mainly the cerebellomesencephalic and cerebellopontine cisterns (Samii A, Gerganov VM, Herold C, Hayashi N, Naka T, Mirzayan MJ, Ostertag H, Samii M (2007) Chordomas of the skull base: surgical management and outcome. J Neurosurg 107(2):319–324), whereas in the far lateral approach, it is more suitable for those mainly interested in the cerebellomedullary cistern (Liu JK, Couldwell WT (2005) Far-lateral transcondylar approach: surgical technique and its application in neurenteric cysts of the cervicomedullary junction. Report of two cases. Neurosurg Focus 19(2), E9; Wen HT, Rhoton AL Jr, Katsuta T, de Oliveira E (1997) Microsurgical anatomy of the transcondylar, supracondylar, and paracondylar extensions of the far-lateral approach. J Neurosurg 87(4):555–585).
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Solari, D. et al. (2016). Endoscopic Endonasal Transsphenoidal Approach. In: Cappabianca, P., Cavallo, L., de Divitiis, O., Esposito, F. (eds) Midline Skull Base Surgery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21533-4_25
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