• Krisna S Maddy, Evan Luther, Ian A Ramsay, Katherine Berry, Lekhaj Daggubati, Alexis Morell, Martin Merenzon, Daniel G Eichberg, Ashish Shah, Ricardo Komotar, and Michael Ivan.
• Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida. Electronic address: Ksm129@med.miami.edu.
• World Neurosurg. 2024 Mar 12.

BackgroundCraniopharyngiomas are benign tumors of the anterior skull base arising from epithelial remnants of Rathke pouch. They mainly occur in the suprasellar space, can be incredibly debilitating, and remain difficult to resect as they frequently involve critical neurovascular structures. Although it is embryologically possible for craniopharyngiomas to arise extracranially along the entire migrational path of Rathke pouch, these remain exceedingly rare, especially among adults, and can be mistaken for nasopharyngeal cancer. As such, minimal data exist evaluating the management and outcomes of such lesions. We evaluated our institutional experience with purely infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngiomas and obtained individual patient data reported in the contemporary literature to better characterize the demographics, presentation, surgical management, and long-term outcomes of these lesions.MethodsA systematic review of the literature was performed to identify previously published cases of purely infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngioma in 3 electronic databases: MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, and Scopus. Search terms were "infrasellar craniopharyngioma" and "nasopharyngeal craniopharyngioma."ResultsWe identified 25 cases, in which 72% of patients presented with symptoms of nasal obstruction, epistaxis, or headache. An endoscopic approach was performed in 40% of cases; 83.3% of all patients had gross total resection, with 60% having no recurrence at a median follow-up of 13 months. No postoperative complications were reported. Tumor location involving the cavernous sinus was associated with incomplete resection (100%) compared with tumors not involving the cavernous sinus (87%) (P = 0.033).ConclusionsWhile uncommon, infrasellar nasopharyngeal craniopharyngiomas appear to have better perioperative and long-term surgical outcomes than their suprasellar counterparts.Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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