A Cross Sectional Study of Clinical and Histopathological Spectrum of Pediatric Brain Tumours

Abstract

Introduction: Brain tumors are the most common tumor of the childhood and the second most common malignancies after haematological malignancies. Childhood central nervous system (CNS) tumors differ significantly from adult brain tumors in reference to their sites of origin, clinical presentation, tendency to disseminate early, histological features and their biological behaviour. Aims and Objective: Analyse the Clinical and histopathological spectrum of brain tumors, in pediatric patients ≤18 year of age. Materials and Method: This was a cross sectional study conducted at the department of pathology, SMS medical college, Jaipur from January 2020 to October 2021. This is a laboratory based descriptive type of observational study and data of brain tumors in children equal or less than 18 year of age procured and their clinico-histopathological spectrum were analyszed. Result: In our study, Out of 116 patients 51.8 % were male and 48.2 % were female. Mean age for the male cases were 10.11 and for female cases were 9.78. we observed intracranial pediatric tumors 67 cases (57.7%) were located in infratentorial region and 49 cases (43.3%) were located in supratentorial region and incidence for intracranial tumor was 39(33.62%) cases of astrocytomas followed by 25 (21.55%)cases of medulloblastoma, 20 (17.24%)cases of ependymoma, 13 (11.20%) cases of craniopharyngioma, 5 (4.31%) cases of pituitary adenoma, 4 (3.44%) cases of meningioma, 3 (2.58%) cases of embryonal and choroid plexus tumor, 2 (1.72%) cases of ganglioglioma and 1 (0.86%) case of Schwannoma and PNET. In this article, Based on tumor location, the symptoms of CNS tumors on the supratentorial region were headache (22 cases, 44.8%), impaired vision (10 cases, 20.4%), seizures (6 cases, 12.2%), vomiting (4 cases, 8.1%). Symptoms of CNS tumors on the infratentorial region were headache (48 cases, 71.6%), vomiting (5 cases, 7.4%), impaired vision (4 cases, 5.9%), seizures (3 cases, 4.4%). Conclusion: Infratentorial cases, maximum number of cases were medulloblastomas and supratentorial cases, maximum number of cases were astrocytic tumours. Overall astrocytic tumours in all senses constituted the most common group of CNS tumours. Within astrocytoma, low grade astrocytoma (grade I & II) was most common CNS paediatric tumour.