Object: There is currently no consensus as to whether meningiomas located inside the venous sinuses should be aggressively or conservatively treated. The goals of this study were to identify how sinus-invading meningiomas grow, report and compare growth rates of tumor components inside and outside the different venous sinuses, identify risk factors associated with increased tumor growth, and determine the effects of the extent of tumor resection on recurrence for meningiomas that invade the dural venous sinuses.
Methods: Adult patients who underwent primary, non-biopsy resection of a WHO grade 1 meningioma invading the dural venous sinuses at a tertiary care institution between 2007 and 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Rates of tumor growth were fit to several growth models to evaluate the most accurate model. Cohen's d analysis was used to identify associations with increased growth of tumor in the venous sinuses. Logistic regression was used to compare extent of resection with recurrence.
Results: Of the 68 patients included in the study, 34 patients had postoperative residual tumors in the venous sinuses that were measured over time. The growth model that best fit the growth of intrasinus meningiomas was the Gompertzian growth model (r2 = 0.93). The annual growth rate of meningiomas inside the sinuses was 7.3%, compared to extrasinus tumors with 13.6% growth per year. The only factor significantly associated with increased tumor growth in sinuses was preoperative embolization (effect sizes (ES) [95% CI], 1.874 [7.633-46.735], p = 0.008).
Conclusions: This study shows that meningiomas involving the venous sinuses have a Gompertzian-type growth with early exponential growth followed by a slower growth rate that plateaus when they reach a certain size. Overall, the growth rate of the intrasinus portion is low (7.3%), which is half of the reported growth rates for other studies involving primarily extrasinus tumors.
Keywords: Cavernous; Growth rate; Meningioma; Sagittal; Transverse; Venous sinus.