Romeo Eleni, Markopoulos Georgios, Voulgaris Spyridon, Vartholomatos George, Alexiou George A
Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
Neurosurgical Institute, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
Neurosurg Rev. 2025 Sep 9;48(1):637. doi: 10.1007/s10143-025-03789-3.
The aim of this review is to present the role of intraoperative flow cytometry (IFC) in the intracranial tumor surgery. This scoping review aims to summarize current evidence on the intraoperative use of IFC in patients with intracranial tumors.
A comprehensive literature search was conducted in the Medline, Cochrane and Scopus databases up to January 21, 2025. Data extraction was carried out following the use of preset inclusion and exclusion criteria.
A total of 14 studies were analyzed in this review, involving 1.043 patients with intracranial tumors to assess the utility of IFC in the rapid diagnosis of these tumors. The studies evaluated IFC for grading gliomas and meningiomas, distinguishing tumor margins, determining tumor prognosis, and its application in pediatric tumors, metastases, and primary central nervous system lymphomas. The most promising applications of IFC are in glioma and meningioma grading, as well as in identifying glioma margins. IFC appears to be a valuable intraoperative tool for intracranial tumor classification, providing rapid results within minutes.
IFC shows potential as a real-time, intraoperative tool for brain tumor classification and surgical guidance. Nevertheless, studies in this field are limited, and further research with more robust data is needed to establish specific cut-off values that will enable reliable conclusions.
本综述的目的是阐述术中流式细胞术（IFC）在颅内肿瘤手术中的作用。本范围综述旨在总结目前关于IFC在颅内肿瘤患者术中应用的证据。
截至2025年1月21日，在Medline、Cochrane和Scopus数据库中进行了全面的文献检索。在使用预设的纳入和排除标准后进行数据提取。
本综述共分析了14项研究，涉及1043例颅内肿瘤患者，以评估IFC在这些肿瘤快速诊断中的效用。这些研究评估了IFC在胶质瘤和脑膜瘤分级、区分肿瘤边界、确定肿瘤预后以及其在儿童肿瘤、转移瘤和原发性中枢神经系统淋巴瘤中的应用。IFC最有前景的应用是在胶质瘤和脑膜瘤分级以及识别胶质瘤边界方面。IFC似乎是一种用于颅内肿瘤分类的有价值的术中工具，可在数分钟内提供快速结果。
IFC显示出作为脑肿瘤分类和手术指导的实时术中工具的潜力。然而，该领域的研究有限，需要更多有力数据的进一步研究来确定能够得出可靠结论的特定临界值。
