Surgical treatment of complex traumatic frontobasal lesions: personal experience in 74 patients

Object The author's personal series included 148 patients who sustained traumatic frontobasal injuries and were treated between 1986 and 1999. Included in this study are 74 of 148 patients with acute injuries and complex fronto-basal lesions involving the frontal sinus, the cribriform/ethmoid roof complex, one or both orbital roofs, and the planum sphenoidale. Methods Surgery was delayed for up to 4 weeks postinjury in most patients (67 cases), whereas 17 with space-occupying hematomas and perforating injuries required early surgery. In 30 patients additional surgery was required to treat maxillofacial fractures, which was performed as a one-stage procedure together with the neurosurgical operation. The author performed a standard bifrontal craniotomy in which an intradural or combined intradural–extradural approach was used in all cases. Four patients developed ascending meningitis in the preoperative period. As a result of surgical treatment one patient died, another two patients suffered from permanent...