title: Hemangioblastomas in the elderly: epidemiology and clinical characteristics.
abstract: Intracranial hemangioblastomas are benign vascular tumors. The peak age of incidence is between 20 to 50 years. Hemangioblastomas rarely occur in patients over the age of 65. To our knowledge there is no review of the prevalence and clinical features in an elderly population. We reviewed our 12 year experience with intracranial hemangioblastomas, and characterized the clinical features of hemangioblastomas in patients over the age of 65. We present a 72-year-old man with a cerebellar mass initially thought to be a metastasis as an illustrative case. We reviewed our pathology database and identified all patients with a histopathologically confirmed diagnosis of hemangioblastoma over the last 12 years in a large tertiary adult hospital; all patients were over the age of 18. Of all cases of hemangioblastoma in the last 12 years, six of 77 (7.7%) occurred in patients over the age of 65. All were cerebellar in location, and none were associated with von-Hippel Lindau disease. Hemangioblastomas are uncommon, but not rare, in patients over the age of 65, and should be included in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with gait ataxia and a cerebellar lesion in this age group.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neurology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Charles D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Kassardjian
authors.affiliation: Division of Neurosurgery, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada; Labatt Family Centre of Excellence in Brain Injury and Trauma Research of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada; Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: R Loch
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Macdonald
authors.affiliation: Division of Pathology, St. Michael's Hospital, 30 Bond Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1W8, Canada; Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada. Electronic address: munozd@smh.ca.
authors.forename: David G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Munoz
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D018325:Hemangioblastoma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012189:Retrospective Studies
keywords: Cerebellar tumor; Elderly; Hemangioblastoma; von-Hippel Lindau