Contralateral evoked brainstem auditory potentials as an indicator of intraoperative brainstem manipulation in cerebellopontine angle tumors.

Brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEP) were studied during operations to remove acoustic tumors using the retromastoid approach. BAEP were elicited from the side contralateral to the tumor, and changes in the latencies of peaks III and V of the BAEP were compared with changes in cardiovascular parameters throughout the operation. When the changes in the determined cardiovascular parameters were related to surgical manipulations, the related changes in the latencies of peaks III and V of the BAEP were more consistent than the changes in the cardiovascular parameters and they tended to occur earlier than the changes noted in the cardiovascular parameters.