Evidence for Cognitive Compensation Mechanism in the Postoperative Delirium: a Prospective Multi-modal Neuroimaging Cohort Study in Patients With Frontal Glioma

Delirium is an acute, reversible, widespread alteration of cognitive function characterized by fluctuating cognitive dysfunction, decreased level of consciousness, inattention, disorganized thinking, or disturbed sleep-wake cycles. Postoperative delirium is a common postoperative complication in surgical patients, occurring 1-3 days after surgery and fluctuating between 11-51% depending on the patient's age, type of surgery, and preoperative underlying disease. Postoperative delirium significantly increases perioperative complications and mortality and may leave severe long-term cognitive impairment. However, there is a relative lack of studies addressing delirium after neurosurgical craniotomy. This population may be at high risk for postoperative delirium given the direct impact of intracranial primary lesions on brain structure and function. Our team has completed a prospective cohort study (registry number: NCT03087838) enrolling 800 post-neurosurgical craniotomy patients and found for the first time that patients with gliomas had the highest incidence of postoperative delirium relative to other intracranial occupying lesions at 37.7%, especially frontal gliomas at 53.3%, and that the incidence of delirium was much higher in patients with high-grade gliomas than in patients with low The incidence of delirium was much higher in patients with high-grade gliomas than in patients with low-grade gliomas (50% vs. 16.7%) (the results of the study have not yet been published). Why is the incidence of postoperative delirium higher in patients with gliomas, especially frontal gliomas, than in other lesions, given that they are intracranial occurrences? This question caused us to think about it.

Glioma is the most common intracranial malignancy, accounting for approximately 80% of malignant brain tumors. Recent studies have found that neurocognitive dysfunction is a more common phenomenon in glioma patients and is closely associated with a decrease in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients. Therefore, as the level of glioma treatment improves, patient survival is prolonged, and quality of life is increasingly emphasized, neurocognitive dysfunction has become a hot issue in the field of glioma. Postoperative delirium, as a clear and important "catalyst" for postoperative cognitive dysfunction, deserves more attention.

Given that the treatment of delirium is uncertain and that 30-40% of postoperative delirium is preventable, it is important to screen for high-risk groups. This project will explore the neuroanatomical basis of postoperative delirium in frontal glioma patients using multimodal magnetic resonance technology preoperatively, and integrate neuroimaging features and cognitive events with multidimensional clinical neurocognitive assessment to construct and validate a risk assessment model to predict postoperative delirium in this population. The significance of this study is: (1) to investigate the pathogenesis of postoperative delirium in frontal glioma patients, to explore the objective neuroimaging features with high specificity and sensitivity in vivo, and to provide new ideas and methods for the pathophysiological mechanisms of postoperative delirium; (2) the construction of the prediction model may help to provide early warning of postoperative delirium in glioma patients, which is of great clinical significance for perioperative management.