title: Staging, scoring and grading of medulloblastoma. A postoperative prognosis predicting system based on the cases of a single institute.
abstract: Although recently survival of some medulloblastoma patients increased remarkably, it remains a serious diagnosis in others. In order to predict the postoperative prognosis in patients treated for medulloblastoma, a new staging, scoring and grading system was developed. Sixty-six patients operated on microsurgically between 1975 and 1990 at a single neurosurgical center were fully followed-up. No patient was excluded due to a poor postoperative course. Completion of commonly used radiotherapy protocols was attempted in all patients. Survival of patients was evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method. The following 5 parameters were selected to define subgroups: patients' age, tumour location and histology, degree of resection and presence or absence of metastases. Patients older than 10 years had a better prognosis than individuals aged 10 or less (p < 0.01), patients with lateral tumours had a better prognosis than patients with midline tumours with brain stem infiltration (p < 0.05), patients with complete tumour resection had a more favourable prognosis than individuals with subtotal (p < 0.01) or partial resection (p < 0.001), patients without metastases at the time of diagnosis had a better prognosis than individuals without such evidence (p < 0.001), patients with the desmoplastic tumour variant had a better prognosis than patients with classical tumour histology (p < 0.01). According to the prognosis of a distinct subgroup, scoring points were distributed which correlated with the degree of inter-subgroup significances. The sum of a single patient's scoring points was called the total score. Based on this score, three groups of prognosis were distinguished.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
authors.affiliation: Neurochirurgische Universitätsklinik Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sure
authors.forename: W J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Berghorn
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bertalanffy
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wakabayashi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yoshida
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sugita
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Seeger
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002528:Cerebellar Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D016371:Cranial Irradiation; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008527:Medulloblastoma / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D018365:Neoplasm, Residual / Q000401:mortality; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000401:mortality*; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D016019:Survival Analysis; D015996:Survival Rate