Successful removal of a giant skull base metastasis from hepatocellular carcinoma after direct ethanol injection: case report.

Skull metastases from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are extremely rich in vascularity, which sometimes makes surgery dangerous. For minimally invasive surgery, it is very important to diminish the intratumoral vascular flow preoperatively. We report the case of a 69-year-old man with a giant skull base metastasis from HCC that was successfully removed after two sessions of direct ethanol injection into the tumor as a preoperative treatment to diminish the intratumoral vascular flow. Direct ethanol injection is a modification of percutaneous ethanol injection therapy, which is widely used in the treatment of primary HCC. In this article, we describe in detail the practical procedures and the usefulness of this treatment for a giant skull base metastasis from HCC.