Intracranial meningiomas in the 9th decade of life: a retrospective study of 17 surgical cases.

The general availability of cerebral computed tomographic and magnetic resonance imaging scans makes the observation of symptomatic intracranial meningiomas in very elderly patients (aged 80 yr or more) relatively frequent. A few authors have reported on patients who have undergone surgery for intracranial meningiomas in their 9th decade of life, without providing indications regarding the surgical criteria and the prognostic factors. We report on a series of 17 patients who have received surgery for intracranial meningiomas in their 9th decade of life, with the goal of determining some surgical criteria for general physicians and neurosurgeons. Patients with severe systemic disease and definite functional limitations (American Society of Anesthesiology Class III) had a major postoperative morbidity (P = 0.020) and mortality (P = 0.005), especially if they scored low (< 70) on the preoperative Karnofsky Rating Scale (P = 0.010). The risk of postoperative morbidity was higher when the maximum diameter of the tumor was > 5 cm (P = 0.031).