Okay,,,,first off, I am a girl...42 yr old female whom works as firefighter EMT for last 20 yrs...seeing that not all of you read the bios...anyways.
I have found lots and I mean lots of endoscopic surgeons....you just have to look in the right place..if you type in your browser endoscopic brain surgery, you will find tons of research about the various proceedures and the advantages of it over traditional methods including microscopic...similar proceedure but endo is much more finely tuned and they do not..let me stress this again..do not touch, retract, bump, move etc your brain....big advantage!!!
Part of the problem is that in the medical field, once moneys and equipment have been procured by and establishment, they tend to stick with what they have..it is expensive to change, plus the liablity insurance is more money..(That I cant figure out, due to the success rates but whatever), and there is also the need for further extensive training...the endo tools require a hands on type of training..you have to get the feel for the instruments...a good site to go to is medline plus videos and look up brain surgery then look up the endo surgery,,everything is explaines as they actually do the surgery...
Endo, is somewhat regarded as difficult in several areas, loss of visualization, possible bleeding etc by the more traditional surgeons..but if you read, you will find that..............the whole point of endo is that you do not bleed...due to much less invasion of tissues.......and feild of vision is better than with traditional microscopic proceedure due to the wider angle of the viewing lens now being used....
recovery is hugely faster than either other approach, and now that they have CSF leakage problems solved, healing etc is much much faster, with little to no risk of SCAR TISSUE>>>>a major factor for most of you ANers...no scar tissue on or around your ear, or facial nerves henceforth preventing, those nasty little problems that most of you have incurred since your surgeries.
Now, I am firm belever in CK treatment if AN is small, and there is room for it to swell as most of them swell after treatment around 6months by 10 to 15%....usually a temporary problem as the tumor dies off....in my case my tumor is about the size of a walnut and if it swells upward, and basically no reason for it not to, it would swell unfortunately into my temporal lobe...very very not good.
I was curious as to why so many endo docs did not advertise more in the way of ANs, but it appears that they treat alllllll types of skull base tumors and even outer meningiomas, so they tend to advertise as endoscopic brain surgeons,,,so if you were looking AN specific, you would not neccesarily find all that do it...now mind you, it is a newer technique, and there are not thousands of Drs whom do it...but definately a growing field....
FYI, good luck to everyone and I will keep you all updated.
Ceeceek
