Water jet dissection represents a new minimally traumatic surgical technique for dissection in neurosurgery. Water is pushed through a small nozzle under pressure ranging from 1 to 100 bar. It allows highly precise parenchymal dissection while preserving blood vessels, resulting in reduced intraoperative blood loss and low complications.

This new technique can be applied easily and with high safety in several different neurosurgical pathologies such as gliomas, metastases, epilepsy surgery. Dissection of other pathologies, such as meningiomas, might require higher pressures. Intraoperatively, the waterjet is comfortable to handle and resection is performed using it in combination with conventional neurosurgical procedures.
Water jet dissection represents, in particular, a promising technique for precise tumor–brain parenchyma dissection in hardly discernible tumors such as some low-grade gliomas or in highly vascularized gliomas in which tissue dissection with sparing of blood vessels can be achieved.