Table 1. Primary search strategy to identify relevant studies using Ovid Medline and Embase.

Number	Search terms	Number of articles
1	‘functional outcom*’.mp	40,884
2	‘skull base’.mp OR MeSH: Skull Base/	22,066
3	‘quality-of-life’.mp OR QOL.mp OR HRQOL.mp OR MeSH: “Quality-of-Life”/	441,366
4	1 or 3	479,047
5	2 and 4	486