Meningiomas of the Anterior Visual System

Summary: Meningiomas represent 13-18% of all primary intracranial tumors (1-6). Up to 20% of patients with these tumors present with visual disturbances and many others develop visual loss as the meningioma grows (7-11). Improvement of ophthalmologic manifestations often occurs after treatment and seems to depend on several factors including tumor size, duration of preoperative visual symptoms, and extent of preoperative visual loss (1,12-19). Thus, treatment is often needed to reverse visual loss and to prevent worsening of preexisting visual system dysfunction. Treatment is primarily surgical (7,8, 10,12,20,21), although high recurrence rates have led to increasingly frequent use of adjunctive radiotherapy (22-37) and consideration of chemotherapy (38-47).