Congenital Brain Tumors in a Series of Seven Patients

Abstract

Background: Congenital brain tumors are very rare. We review these tumors in patients younger than 2 months diagnosed in our Department. Methods: Seven congenital brain tumors were diagnosed during 5 years. Clinical and radiological findings and prognosis were analyzed. Results: The study included 5 female and two male infants. Two cases were diagnosed antenatally by means of ultrasonography. All patients presented with intracranial hypertension. All neuroimaging studies revealed nonhomogenous tumors with cystic and solid components, except for the case with choroid plexus papilloma (CPP). Hydrocephalus was evident in all of them. Most were infratentorial lesions. There were three teratomas, one primitive neuroectodermal tumor, one ependymoblastoma and one CPP. Six patients were operated on, with one intraoperative death. Two passed away postoperatively with aspiration pneumonia. One patient died due to complications of chemotherapy and another one due to tumor recurrence 1 year after surgery. Only the patient with CPP is alive after 2 years. Conclusions: Today, the availability of noninvasive imaging procedures such as computerized tomography scan and magnetic resonance imaging has improved the diagnosis of congenital brain tumors. In spite of development in prenatal diagnosis, appropriate pre- and postoperative management, the mortality associated with these tumors still remains high. The final prognosis in these patients is still discouraging despite early surgery and operative and anesthetic improvements. CPP is accompanied by the best prognosis, whereas teratoma and primitive neuroectodermal tumors have the worst prognosis.

The significance of fetal ventriculomegaly: etiology, short‐ and long‐term outcomes

“…These are extremely rare conditions in the fetus. Overproduction of CSF is observed in cases of choroid plexus papilloma (Di Rocco and Iannelli, 1997;Nejat et al, 2007) thus defining a 'nonobstructive' lesion. VM can be secondary to disorders of neuronal proliferation (megalencephaly, microcephaly), neuronal migration (schizencephaly, lissencephaly), agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) or disorders of organogenesis, such as holoprosencephaly (Ashwal, 2001;Fong et al, 2004;Malinger et al, 2007;Pastorino et al, 2007).…”

Infantile Intracranial Neoplasms: Characteristics and Surgical Outcomes of a Contemporary Series of 21 Cases in an Egyptian Referral Center

“…Perinatal intracranial tumors, a special subgroup of tumors of congenital origin that present either prenatally or within the first 2 months of birth, are rare, and represent only 0.5–1.5% of all pediatric intracranial tumors [15,16,17,18,19,20]. Because of widespread availability of modern neuroimaging techniques, such as ultrasound (US), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), intracranial neoplasms in infants, neonates and fetuses are being diagnosed much earlier and more frequently [21]. …”

“…A long period, ranging from 10 to 40 years, was required in most of the previous clinical studies to trace a statistically significant number of intracranial tumors in infants and neonates [8,9,11,12,13,14,18,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]; several publications reported follow-up over a moderate period of 5–7 years [10,21]. Therefore, most of these studies were subject to diagnostic and prognostic biases stemming from the wide gap between the outdated tools initially used and the remarkable recent advances in neuroimaging procedures, neuroanesthesia, neurosurgical techniques, perioperative intensive care facilities and modern adjuvant chemotherapeutic regimens [30].…”

MRI Characteristics of Ependymoblastoma: Results from 22 Centrally Reviewed Cases

“…3,[17][18][19][20][21] Histologically designated as a subgroup of CNS-PNET, EBL seems to share imaging features with (other) CNS-PNETs. On MR imaging scans, EBL and other CNS-PNETs appear as large, heterogeneous tumor masses with iso-to hyperintense signal to gray matter on T2WI, pointing to increased cellularity.…”