Abstract
Brain tumour associated oedema is a significant contributor to patient morbidity and mortality whilst striving for disease control. Indeed initially, cerebral oedema may result in the signs and symptoms leading to patient presentation rather than the tumour itself. For several decades, Dexamethasone has remained the mainstay in treatment notwithstanding its host of side effects. As such there is growing interest for alternative agents. A prerequisite for the development of novel therapeutic agents would be an animal model with a high degree of validity. Great progress has been made with animal models of brain tumours but a paucity of focus on peritumoural oedema. We sought to investigate animal models of brain tumour that exhibit oedema which can be confirmed on imaging and that manifest clinically. A systematic scoping review of EMBASE, CINAHL, Medline and Pubmed identified 603 reports that matched initial broad inclusion criteria, however as yet, most models did not fully satisfy our search for the ideal model. Further work is required to define an animal model that consistently demonstrates peritumoural oedema that is radiologically quantifiable and clinically manifest to allow effective research into alternative oedema-supressing agents.