Conservative Management of Vestibular Schwannoma: Results and Suggestions after 20 Years of Experience

Abstract

Introduction: There was a time when almost every vestibular schwannoma (VS) was surgically treated. Approximately 20 years ago, we started to adopt a conservative management in some cases of small intracanalicular tumors affecting elderly people. In this period, the development of neuroradiological techniques, combined with a greater awareness of its usefulness among physicians, caused an increase in the clinical incidence of VS. Small and medium tumors are today more frequently detected. The collective experience and reports from the literature seem to support the concept that conservative management of VS may sometimes be preferred to surgery or radiotherapy, even considering the increasing importance attributed to the quality of life of patients. We report an update of our experience with the conservative management of patients with VS.