Safety and efficacy of frameless stereotactic robot-assisted intraparenchymal brain lesion biopsies versus image-guided biopsies: a bicentric comparative study

Purpose: User-friendly robotic assistance and image-guided tools have been developed in the past decades for intraparenchymal brain lesion biopsy. These two methods are gradually becoming well accepted and are performed at the discretion of the neurosurgical teams. However, only a few data comparing their effectiveness and safety are available.

Methods: Population-based parallel cohorts were followed from two French university hospitals with different surgical methods and defined geographical catchment regions (September 2019 to September 2022). In center A, frameless robot-assisted stereotactic intraparenchymal brain lesion biopsies were performed, while image-guided intraparenchymal brain lesion biopsies were performed in center B. Pre-and postoperative clinical, radiological, and histomolecular features were retrospectively collected and compared.

Results: Two hundred fifty patients were included: 131 frameless robot-assisted stereotactic intraparenchymal brain lesion biopsies in center A and 119 image-guided biopsies in center B. The clinical, radiological, and histomolecular features were comparable between the two groups. The diagnostic yield (96.2% and 95.8% respectively; p = 1.000) and the overall postoperative complications rates (13% and 14%, respectively; p = 0.880) did not differ between the two groups. The mean duration of the surgical procedure was longer in the robot-assisted group (61.9 ± 25.3 min, range 23-150) than in the image-guided group (47.4 ± 11.8 min, range 25-81, p < 0.001). In the subgroup of patients with anticoagulant and/or antiplatelet therapy administered preoperatively, the intracerebral hemorrhage > 10 mm on postoperative CT scan was higher in the image-guided group (36.8%) than in the robot-assisted group (5%, p < 0.001).

Conclusion: In our bicentric comparative study, robot-assisted stereotactic and image-guided biopsies have two main differences (shorter time but more frequent postoperative hematoma for image-guided biopsies); however, both techniques are demonstrated to be safe and efficient.