A case series discussing the anaesthetic management of pregnant patients with brain tumours.

Pregnancy may aggravate the natural history of an intracranial tumour, and may even unmask a previously unknown diagnosis. Here we present a series of seven patients who had brain tumours during pregnancy. The aim of this case series is to characterize the current perioperative management and to suggest evidence based guidelines for the anaesthetic management of pregnant females with brain tumours. This is a retrospective study. Information on pregnant patients diagnosed with brain tumours that underwent caesarean section (CS) and/or brain tumour resection from May 2003 through June 2008 was obtained from the Department of General Anaesthesia and the Rose Ella Burkhardt Brain Tumour & Neuro-Oncology Centre (BBTC) at the Cleveland Clinic, OH, USA. The mean age was 34.5 years (range 29-40 years old). Six patients had glioma, two of whom had concomitant craniotomy and CS. Six cases had the tumour in the frontal lobe. Four cases were operated on under general anaesthesia and three underwent awake craniotomy. The neonatal outcomes of the six patients with elective or emergent delivery were six viable infants with normal Apgar scores. Pregnancy was terminated in the 7th patient. In conclusion, management of brain tumours in pregnant women is mainly reliant on case reports and the doctor's personal experience. Therefore, close communication between the neurosurgeon, neuroanaesthetist, obstetrician and the patient is crucial. General anaesthesia, propofol, dexmedetomidine and remifentanil were used in our study and were safe. Although this may not agree with previous studies, desflurane and isoflurane were used in our patients with no detectable complications.