Skull Base Committee Report

Despite the pandemic year, the Skull Base Committee and the North American Skull Base Society, the Brazilian Society of Neurosurgery (SBN), the Latin-American Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (FLANC), the Mexican Society of Neurological Surgery, the Argentinian Association of Neurosurgery and Ircad-Strasbourg have organized several webinars, which reached a large number of neurosurgeons all over the world.

On February 7-9 in San Antonio, Texas, during the 30^th Annual Meeting of North American Skull Base Society, we had a session entitled “World Skull Base Leadership”, organized by Drs José Alberto Landeiro and Fred Gentili. There were five speakers from Latin-America: Profs Pablo Ayer, Diego Mendez Rosito, Francisco Guzman and Juan Carlos Goméz Amador.

From April 27-May 1, with SBN, Skull Base Week was held. There were 5 online conferences: Profs Daniel Prevedelo, Ossama Al-Mefty, Ali Krisht, Marcos Tatagiba, and Luis Borba.

On May 5^th, Prof. Nelson Oyesiku gave a lecture called “Management of Pituitary Tumors in the Age of Covid”, sponsored by SBN and the Skull Base Committee.

In Buenos Aires (AR), on May 6th, FLANC organized a webinar about Petroclival Meningiomas with two lectures given by Professors Andres Cervio and Ulisses Garcia: “Anterior Transpetrosal Approach” and “Retrosigmoideo Approach”.

In Mexico City, on June 5^th, sponsored by WFNS, FLANC, and the Mexican Society of Neurological Surgery, in an event organized by Prof. Arturo Ayala Arcipreste, we had a three hour-session entitled “Evolution and Future of the Microneurosurgery”, with lectures given by Professors Ossama Al-Mefty, José Alberto Landeiro and Luis Borba.

In general, all the meetings mentioned above gathered around 1000 participants, with enough time dedicated for discussions following the lectures.

On July 11^th, we organized along with SBN and the Mexican Society an event called Skull Base Saturday, with Professors Chandranath Sen, Pablo Ayer, Luis Borba, Sébastien Froelich, and Marcos Tatagiba. Each lecture lasted 45 minutes. This event was broadcasted to Asia, Latin America and Europe and reached over 10.000 participants on Youtube.

From July 15-17, at Ircad-Strasbourg, Prof Sébastien Froelich organized the webinar “Open Skull Base Approaches” - the first webinar to feature a live dissection. The meeting was free of charge and broadcasted worldwide. As guest speakers, Profs Jacques Morcos, José A. Landeiro, T.Goto from Japan. Many fellows from Prof Froelich gave lectures and presented cases.

On October 10, a session on chordoma was held during Al-Mefty’ s Fellows & Friends Association 1^st Annual Symposium, with conferences by Profs Sébastien Froelich, Miguel Arraez, and Shaan Raza.

In Mexico City, from November 5th to 7th, a new meeting with live dissection was held. The chairman was Dr. Diego Mendez Rosito, co-sponsored by Dr. James Liu from NJ, USA, Carl Snyderman, and Paul Gardner from Pittsburgh, featuring many conferences by experts on Skull Base Open Microsurgery and Endoscopic approaches.

In Strasbourg, from January 26-29th, Drs S. Froelich and C. Debry organized a new meeting: ”360-Degree Skull Base Course”. This theoretical and practical course showed all the open skull base approaches, with one part dedicated to endoscopy. There were many guest expert speakers, such as Jacques Morcos, Fred Gentili, B. George, M. Kohno, Luigi Cavallo, and Luis Borba.

Besides the events mentioned above, the Committee has had active participation in the Skull Base program for the next World Federation Congress in Bogota, Colombia.

Finally, we would like to thank all the colleagues who helped organize many meetings and keep the Committee active during this unusual period.