Neurologic Symptoms and Signs in 347 Cases of Verified Brain Tumor

Abstract

IN making the diagnosis of a brain tumor, the only sure method is by surgical exploration and microscopic analysis. However, in order to make a tentative diagnosis of a space taking intracranial lesion there must be a strong suspicion initiated by the patient's symptoms and confirmed by a careful neurologic examination. In analyzing the records of 347 brain tumors seen over a ten year period at the University Hospital, Ann Arbor, a purely statistical summary has been made of the symptoms and signs which occurred with sufficient frequency to be significant in the diagnosis. The purpose of this paper is to tabulate these findings according to proven anatomic location of the tumor.The criterion of case selection was that an anatomically localizing diagnosis IDENTIFYING DATAOf 347 brain tumors presented, 93 (27 per cent) were infratentorial, and the remaining 254 (73 per cent) were supratentorial. The latter were divided anatomically into 18 separate categories. By far the majority were located in the frontal lobes (65 cases or 19 per cent), exclusive of parietal or temporal extension. The infratentorial tumors were placed in only two categories. These were rather arbitrarily separated anatomically with one group including those lesions occurring anterior to the fourth ventricle (midbrain, pons and medulla) , and the other including fourth ventricle, cerebellar, and posterior fossa tumors. 437