Posterior Fossa Tumor Surgical Outcomes

Based on the consensus from the Delphi conference, CMS was defined as mutism or notably reduced speech after posterior fossa tumor removal. Hypotonia, behavior change, and dysphagia after surgery during hospital days were also acquired from medical records or telephone interviews to further depict the details of CMS manifestations. Due to the difficulties of assessing ataxia when patients are in a hypotonia status, we did not include this feature. Behavior change was defined as when the patient presented with irritability or apathy. The onset of mutism was defined as days after the surgery date, and the surgery date was set as day 0. The restoration of speech was defined as being able to speak at least one Chinese word, i.e., “Baba” (dad) or “Mama” (mum), rather than a conversational speech. The duration of mutism was the duration between mutism onset and speech restoration. The aforementioned were collected from medical records and a follow-up database.