Quality of life following surgery for large and giant vestibular schwannomas: a prospective study.

OBJECT: Prospective studies of quality of life (QOL) are infrequently performed in patients undergoing surgery for vestibular schwannoma (VS). The authors designed this to study to investigate health-related QOL (HR-QOL) in patients with large and giant VSs before and after surgery.

METHODS

Between January 2009 and December 2012, HR-QOL was measured prospectively before and after surgery, using the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), in 100 patients who underwent surgery for unilateral large or giant VS (tumor size≥3 cm). The Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI) was also used to evaluate the effect of surgery.

RESULTS

A total of 100 patients were included in the study (65 men and 35 women). Their mean age (±SD) was 44.2±11.5 years. The preoperative QOL was decreased in all SF-36 domains. A 1-year follow-up evaluation was conducted for all patients (mean 13.5±5.3 months after surgery). The results showed an improvement in HR-QOL compared with preoperative status in all cases, with 63%-85% of patients showing a minimum clinically important difference (MCID) in various domains. A second follow-up evaluation was performed in 51 cases (mean time after surgery, 29.0±8.3 months) and showed sustained improvement in SF-36 scores. In some domains there was further improvement beyond the first follow-up. On the GBI, 87% of patients reported improvement, 1% felt no change, and 12% of patients reported deterioration.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients harboring large or giant VSs score lower on all the QOL domains compared with the normative population. More than 60% showed a clinically significant improvement in HR-QOL 1 year after surgery, a result that was sustained at subsequent follow-up.