UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Methods: A retrospective study of 633 children, under 15 years aged with primary brain tumors who were admitted at the neurosurgical center between 1978and 2003 was performed. The patients' charts were reviewed to extract information about demographics, and histopathological diagnosis of tumors. All patients entered into this study had pathologically proven brain tumor. The frequency distribution of brain tumors by age and sex, and histopathology was calculated.

Results: The male-female ratio was 58.1% to 41.9%, vary significantly (P<.05). The mean age of the patients at time of diagnosis was 8.79 years (SD= 3.89) with Median of 9 years. The five most common histological diagnoses in both sexes among patients were Astrocytoma (39.5%), followed by Medulloblastoma (18.0%), Ependymoma (10.3%), Craniopharyngioma (8.7%), and Meningioma (5.7%). Most of brain tumor types occurred in children between 5 to 15 years of age, and these account about 85%. Comparing the most frequent tumors types by age groups, Astrocytoma was the first most common brain tumors in all age groups and was occurred mostly in children aged 5-15yrs (87%).