The Impact of Endoscopic Endonasal Skull Base Surgery on Olfaction

This research study is looking into a type of brain surgery called endoscopic endonasal skull base surgery. This operation is performed through the nose and is used to treat certain conditions at the base of the brain, such as tumors like meningiomas or pituitary problems. It's a keyhole surgery approach, meaning doctors use small instruments and a camera through your nostrils, avoiding larger cuts on your head.

The main aim of this study is to understand how this surgery might affect a person's sense of smell. While this surgery is very effective for many brain conditions, it's not yet clear how often patients notice changes in their smell afterwards, and why those changes happen. This study wants to get a clearer picture of these effects.

To do this, the research team will carefully check patients' sense of smell before their surgery and again afterwards. They will also study small pieces of tissue from inside the nose that are normally removed during this type of operation to help the surgeon see what they are doing. By looking at these tissue samples very closely, the scientists hope to find out what exactly changes at a microscopic level that might impact smell. This deeper understanding could one day help improve how people recover their sense of smell after surgery.