Review of glomus jugular tumor experience at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1950-1996. What have we learned?

Since Stacey Guild first described the glomus body in our temporal bone laboratory, we have had a major interest in paragangliomas. In earlier years. most of these tumors were dealt with using combinations of conservative surgery and radiotherapy. During the second half of our experience, we have tended to rely more upon aggressive surgical treatments, often utilizing planed staged procedures, intervemional radiology and limited radiotherapy. This stimulated our desire to now review long term results on a retrospective basis in hope of learning how best to individualize decision making for future patients diagnosed with this affliction and to be able to give them our most accurate pretreatment informed consent. The results and our interpretation of them are presented.