This technique allows doctors to use small electrodes to stimulate a nerve so its electrical response, or evoked potential, can be measured. By determining the role of specific nerves in a particular patient, surgeons are helped to avoid damage to sensitive areas of the brain. Surgery under local anesthesia with brain mapping techniques allows removal of tumors even from speech and motor areas and is well tolerated by patients. Surgery in the future may be more widely used to deliver novel treatments such as gene therapy or certain chemotherapeutic agents as well as to resect tumors. While not a recently developed technology, surgery for some patients may involve the insertion of a shunt into the brain when a tumor blocks the flow of cerebrospinal fluid and causes hydrocephalus.
Shunts are flexible tubes used to reroute and drain fluid.
Shunting of the fluid can relieve headaches, nausea and other symptoms caused by too much pressure inside the skull.