Motor and language deficits before and after surgical resection of mesial frontal tumour
Received 11 March 2008; received in revised form 30 June 2008; accepted 15 July 2008.
Abstract
Objective
The goal of the present study was to better characterize pre- and immediately post-surgical motor and language deficits resulting from the surgery of tumours located in the medial part of the frontal lobe.
Patients and methods
Seven patients treated by surgical resection of low-grade gliomas affecting the medial part of the frontal lobe were studied with neuropsychological tasks investigating motor and language abilities before surgery and at three time points after surgery (first, third and seventh day after surgery). The tasks were constructed in a way that allowed the structured comparison between language and motor functions, and controlled the level of external constraint of the production.
Results
The main results of this study are: (1) globally the patients were impaired in both language and motor production the day after surgery; (2) the performance improved faster for tasks with strongly constrained production; (3) the verbal and semantic fluency were very sensitive and appropriate tasks for examination of the deficits resulting from the resection; and (4) performances were back to normal seven days after the surgery for most of the tasks.
Conclusion
These results confirm that surgery of low-grade gliomas affecting the prefrontal midline areas affects only transiently motor and language functions as tested in this study. They also suggest that verbal and semantic fluency were the most severely affected tests postoperatively. On the basis of these results, the surgical resection of the low-grade gliomas of the prefrontal midline seems a valuable treatment alternative.
aLaboratoire d’Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Institut de Psychologie, Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France
bLaboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS & Université de Provence, Marseille, France
cService de Neurochirurgie, CHU Montpellier, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, Montpellier, France
dService de Neurochirurgie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France
eInserm U610, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France
fUnité IRM – Neuroradiologie, INSERM/UJF 594, CHU Grenoble, France
gService de Neurologie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France
hCentre de NeuroImagerie de Recherche – CENIR, Service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France
Corresponding author. Laboratoire d’Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Institut de Psychologie, Université Lyon 2; 5 Avenue Pierre Mendès France, 69676 Bron, France.
ABSTRACT