A minimally invasive endoscopic transnasal approach to the craniovertebral junction in the paediatric population

Excerpt

Access to the craniovertebral junction can be extremely challenging owing to the complex anatomy of this area. The traditional transoral approach is widely recognized as the standard procedure, but is not without its limitations and drawbacks. The endoscopic transnasal route, first introduced by Kassam et al. [1], is minimally invasive and should be considered as a feasible alternative, particularly for the paediatric population. Few authors have described a purely endoscopic transnasal technique and their experiences mainly limited to one or two paediatric patients aged 10–15 [2‐6]. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first paediatric case series consisting of the youngest reported patient as well as the first report on utilization of the endoscopic transnasal approach for biopsy and partial resection of a posterior fossa tumour. …