Critical look at the surgical approaches of nasopharyngeal angiofibroma excision and "total maxillary swing" as a possible alternative.

OBJECTIVES

We critically analyzed different surgical approaches used for the excision of nasopharyngeal angiofibroma (NPA) at our hospital in a 10-year period and proposed "total maxillary swing" as a possible alternative approach.

METHODS

Retrospective review of the clinical and operative records was done regarding 39 cases of NPA that were surgically managed from 1995 to 2005. The duration of the surgical procedures, amount of blood loss and transfusion, time to recurrence, frequency of recurrence, functional and cosmetic deformity, and complications of all surgical procedures were thoroughly analyzed. These parameters were compared with total maxillary swing, a new approach recently being used by us, for the one-time excision of NPA.

RESULTS

A total of 61 operations including revision surgeries for recurrences were done in the 39 cases of NPA. Conventional surgical approaches were performed in 37 cases, and the total maxillary swing approach was used in 2 cases. This new approach provided a wider surgical exposure for complete tumor resection and better hemostasis without any recurrence or major functional deformity, which were seen with some of the conventional approaches.

CONCLUSIONS

We found total maxillary swing to be a relatively safe alternate approach for the resection of NPA. We removed the entire tumors in a wider surgical field under the microscope with reduced blood loss and minimal complications or chance of recurrences.