Introduction: Preoperative diagnosis of intracranial space occupying lesion based solely on clinical and neuroimaging evaluation may not be sufficient to institute treatment plan without histopathological certainty. Frame based stereotactic biopsy is a technique of retrieving biopsy specimen to determine the histopathology. The aim of this study is to assess the efficacy and accuracy of frame based technique.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among 80 patients who underwent computed tomography guided frame based stereotactic biopsy during a period of 6 years. All operations were performed under local anesthesia. Histopathology reports were retrieved and accuracy of biopsy technique analyzed. Results:Out of 80 patients, 58 were male with male to female ratio of 2.6:1. Median age of patients were 50 years with range from 16 to 75 years. Most lesions were in deeper location 49 (61.3%). Most common location was Parietal, 15 (18.8%) followed by Thalamic, 12 (15%). Mean size of lesion was 2.88±0.71cms ranged from 2 to 5cms. Biopsy was accurate to retrieve target in 74 (92.5%) patients. Histopathology revealed glial tumor in 41 (51.2%) of cases. Overall morbidity was observed in 3 (5.5%) patients. There is no procedure related mortality in this study during study period. Conclusions:Frame based biopsy of intracranial space occupying lesion is safe and efficacious procedure with high diagnostic yield.

Biopsy is mandatory for histological diagnosis of non-resectable brain tumors. Of various techniques, neuronavigation guided biopsy provides intraoperative real-time reference and allows biopsy from multiple trajectories. The aim of this study is to assess the efficacy and accuracy of frameless neuronavigation biopsy. We retrospectively reviewed the medical archives of patients with intracranial space occupying lesion who underwent frameless neuronavigation biopsy at our institute between 2016 to 2018. All operations were performed under general anesthesia. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 20. P value of <0.05 was considered significant. There were 46 patients who underwent neuronavigation guided biopsy over the period of two years. Median age of patients was 46.5 years. Supratentorial tumors accounted for 95.8% of cases. Mean tumor diameter was 3.35 cm. Accuracy was 89.1%. More than half were glial tumors. Histopathology was inconclusive in 10.9% cases. Complication rate was 4.3%: one tract hematoma and one new neurological deficit. Frameless neuronavigation guided biopsy of intracranial space occupying lesion is safe and efficacious procedure with high diagnostic yield.