General Anesthesia vs. Local Anesthesia in Stereotaxy

Stereotactic biopsy is routinely performed under local or general anesthesia. The advantage of local anesthesia might be reduction in cardiac and pulmonal complications, reduction of surgical time, and reduction of hospital stay. On the other hand it has been postulated that intraoperative seizures are avoided by general anesthesia and that brain tumor surgery is perceived in the public as psychological and physical stress.Therefor we postulate that patients undergoing stereotactic biopsies in local anesthesia show a higher stress level than patients operated under general anesthesia.