Quality of Life in Sporadic Vestibular Schwannoma

Abstract

The focus of management in sporadic vestibular schwannoma has dramatically evolved over the last 100 years. The centrality of quality of life (QoL) is being underscored by an ongoing epidemiologic shift toward an older patient demographic that is being diagnosed with smaller tumors and often with few associated symptoms. Two disease-specific QoL instruments have been developed for sporadic vestibular schwannoma: the Penn Acoustic Neuroma Quality of Life Scale in 2010, and more recently, the Mayo Clinic Vestibular Schwannoma Quality of Life Index in 2022. The current article examines disease-specific quality-of-life outocmes in the management of ssporadic vestibular schwannoma.

Keywords: Conservative management; Decisional regret; Microsurgery; Observation; Quality of life; Radiosurgery; Treatment; Wait-and-scan.