Partial labyrinthectomy approach for brainstem vascular lesions

Conventional wisdom has typically dictated that the bony labyrinth is an in violate structure. This notion, however, was successfully challenged follow ing the introduction of the partial labyrinthectomy approach, which was pri marily used for the surgical management of cerebellopontine and petrous ape x meningiomas. In this article, we discuss an extension of the technique of partial labyrinthectomy in a series of patients that has been used for the treatment of brainstem vascular lesions. We believe that this technique pr ovides superior exposure to the brain stem when compared with conventional retrosigmoid and retrolabyrinthine approaches while reducing the inherent m orbidity seen in transotic or petrosectomy approaches.