[Common errors of intraoperative navigation in lateral skull base surgery].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

The knowledge of disturbing factors for navigated surgical procedures in lateral skull base surgery will help the user to identify, avoid, and correct these errors.

PATIENTS/METHODS: Based on our experiences with 85 patients undergoing surgery of the lateral skull base, errors of hard- and software, of image acquisition and image transfer, of patient registration, user-related errors as well as strategic errors were analyzed.

RESULTS

Any impairment of the camera field leads to functional limitation of optical systems to the same extent as electromagnetic systems can be affected by ferromagnetic materials. Standard patient registration procedures as well as the lack of compensation for soft tissue shift may cause problems.

CONCLUSIONS

While dealing with navigation devices in lateral skull base surgery, the user must pay critical attention to certain details in order to recognize and interpret possible malfunction.