Chair, Co-Chair: Jeff Olson, MD and  Ryan Ormond, MD
Members: Garni Barkhoudarian, MD, Emanuela Binello, MD,  Shawn Hervey-Jumper, MD, Rohan Ramakrishna, MD, Matthew Shepard, MD and Gabe Zada, MD

The current Congress of Neurologic Surgery guidelines development methodology has been in use for more than a decade. Refinements and alternative methods to developing guidelines continue to arise, not only within our specialty, but also in other areas of medicine. To that end, the Joint Tumor Section, as well as other joint sections within our specialty, will begin a review of our methods in an effort to streamline them and improve their objective nature, reliability and timeliness of updates.

In order to improve trainees’ experience in the use and development of guidelines across the entire spectrum of neurosurgical experience, the CNS Guidelines Office has established a fellowship program to expose trainees to the importance of guidelines and the details of their development. The Joint Tumor Section is actively using this resource for guideline search development and refinement and to assist in the modification of guidelines methodology. Residents and fellows interested in these positions should contact the CNS Guidelines office. There are multiple positions available.

New guidelines are under development for functioning pituitary adenomas and metastatic spine tumors, and updates are in progress for the management of low-grade gliomas, nonfunctioning pituitary adenomas and vestibular schwannomas.

Although it is somewhat early for an update, considerable interest is present regarding new and improved methods of management of metastatic brain tumors. Therefore, the Joint Tumor Section Guidelines Committee has initiated a literature search for an early update to the emerging therapies section of this guideline. This update is particularly focused on laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT), targeted therapy and immunotherapies for this set of tumors. The literature on these topics is quite large and section members Brad Elder, Mark Linskey and Brian Nahed are hard at work screening it now. Members of the section who are interested in assisting with the writing after completion of the search screening are encouraged to participate.