Introduction: In 2003, Kanzaki and colleagues published a set of reporting standards for vestibular schwannoma (VS) to serve as a guide for future publications. Here, the current published body of literature on VS cases treated with microsurgery was reviewed to determine its degree of adherence to the reporting systems since the publication of the reporting standards.

Methods: A comprehensive search of the English language literature was performed to identify studies reporting outcome data obtained in patients who underwent microsurgical resection for VSs. The number of studies and reported cases that had included each of the key items described in the Consensus Meeting reporting guidelines prior to and after the publication of the reporting guidelines was compared.

Results: The literature review revealed 218 studies including 37,329 cases that were published prior to the reporting guidelines, and 66 studies with 17,053 cases published after the reporting standards. After publication of the standards, there were significantly greater proportion of studies that properly reported the facial nerve function, hearing, and postoperative neurologic morbidity and operative complications. When normalized for the number of patients, there was, however, lower proportion of cases that were reported with size and volume, the nature, the degree of resection, facial nerve function and hearing after the release of the Consensus guidelines.

Conclusions: Since the release of the reporting guidelines for VS, the focus of the publications appears to have shifted away from basic clinical characteristics such as size, nature and degree of resection, and towards operative complications and post-treatment neurologic function. The shift may have been in part driven by the evolving interests of the community of academic neurosurgery and otolaryngology. However, even publications solely focusing on complications and functional outcomes must keep the data in context of the basic essential set of clinical characteristics, in order to facilitate comparison of outcomes across institutions.

Patient Care: Vestibular Schwannoma is a complex disorder and The clinical experience and outcomes of patients after surgical resection have been published widely by many authors and institutions. However, when all studies include a core set of essential patient, management and outcome characteristics for a given pathology, comparison of outcomes across institutions will become much more reliable.

Learning Objectives: 1) Describe the items included in the reporting standard guidelines published by the Consensus Meeting on Systems for Reporitng Results in Acoustic Neuroma. 2) Discuss the potential impact of reporting standards on the literature reporting outcomes of vestibular schwannoma treated with microsurgery 3) Discuss the benefits of adhering to reporting standards when reporting outcomes after surgical treatment of vestibular schwannoma. 4) Develop a greater awareness for evolving areas of focus and interest for a given pathology over time.

References: Kanzaki J, Tos M, Sanna M, Moffat DA. New and Modified Reporting Systems from the Consensus Meeting on Systems for Reporting Results in Vestibular Schwannoma. Otology and Neurotology. 24:642-649, 2003.