Quality of Life Following Endonasal Skull Base Surgery

The importance of quality of life (QOL) outcomes following treatments for head and neck tumors are now increasingly appreciated and measured to improve medical and surgical care for these patients. An understanding of the definitions in the setting of health care and the use of appropriate QOL instruments and measures are critical to obtain meaningful information that guides decision making in various aspects of patient health care. QOL outcomes following cranial base surgery is only recently being defined. In this article, we describe the current published data on QOL outcomes following cranial base surgery and provide preliminary prospective data on QOL outcomes and sinonasal morbidity in patients who underwent endonasal cranial base surgery for management of various skull base tumors at our institution. We used a disease-specific multidimensional instrument to measure QOL outcomes in these patients. Our results show that although sinonasal morbidity is increased, this is temporary, and the vast majority of patients have a very good QOL by 4 to 6 months after endonasal approach to the cranial base.