Epidemiological Characterization of Brain Tumors in Colombia, a 10-Year Period

Abstract

Introduction: Central nervous system tumors are rare; in 2015 they represented approximately 1.4% of new cancer diagnoses, causing 2.6% of deaths by cancer that year. In Colombia, there are few reports on the epidemiology of brain tumors, and those that exist are local databases that do not have a rigorous and massive registry. Due to limited epidemiological information in our country, this document aims to characterize the epidemiology of brain tumors in Colombia over a 10-year period. Methods: A retrospective descriptive observational study was conducted, using databases of population-based cancer registries in Colombia. We extracted information from a 10-year period recorded in patients with tumors without age group restriction. A descriptive analysis was carried out for all the variables considered, the incidence and mortality rates per 100,000 person years were calculated. Statistical software Stata 14.0 was used. Results: Our analysis was performed with a population of 775 adult patients and 123 pediatric patients, with an incidence of 1.55 per 100.000 individuals in the pediatric population and 3.19 per 100.000 individuals in the adult population. The mortality rate for pediatric and adult patients was 0.063 per 100.000 individuals and 1.86 per 100.000 individuals respectively. The most frequent tumors in the pediatric age group were neuroepithelial tumors, embryonal tumors and ependymal tumors, whereas for adults, the most frequent were neuroepithelial tumors, meningiomas and hematolymphoid tumors. Conclusions: This study constitutes the most recent work on the epidemiology of brain tumors in Colombia. There was a clear general underreporting and statistics lower than those compared with the literature. It is intended to expand coverage and data collection in population-based cancer registries.