title: Tumors of the Central Nervous System: An 18-Year Retrospective Review in a Tertiary Pediatric Referral Center.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Few studies exist on the demographics and trends of pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors in Iran. In this study, we retrospectively reviewed all cases with confirmed CNS tumors admitted to Mofid Pediatric Hospital, Tehran, Iran during the last 18 years.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data on gender, age of diagnosis, pathologic classification and tumor location were extracted from the available medical records. We used the last version of International Classification of Childhood Cancer.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall, 258 (81.9%) brain tumors and 57 (18.1%) spinal tumors were identified. Our subjects comprised of 147 (46.7%) female and 168 (53.3%) male children. More male dominancy was observed in brain tumors with a male to female ratio of 1.2 compared with 1.03 of spinal tumors. Malignant CNS tumors were most common in 1-4 yr age group. The four most common brain tumors in our subjects were astrocytomas, medulloblastoma, ependymoma and craniopharyngioma. Overall, 53.1% of the brain tumors were supratentorial. Gliomas, PNET and neuroblastma were the most frequent primary spinal tumors in our study. We observed an increasing trend for both brain and spinal tumors that was moreremarkable in the last 5 years.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results are comparable with similar single center studies on CNS tumors during childhood. The observed disparities could be attributed to the single center nature of our study and geographical, environmental and racial variations in pediatric CNS tumors. The increasing trend of both brain and spinal tumors could warrant further investigations at provincial and national levels to investigate probable contributing environmental risk factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Loghman Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hosein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Aghayan Golkashani
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, School of Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hossein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hatami
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Mofid Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Abdonaser
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Farzan
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Mofid Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hassan Reza
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Mohammadi
authors.affiliation: Pediatric Pathology Research Center, Mofid Children's Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Yalda
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nilipour
authors.affiliation: Pediatric Pathology Research Center, Mofid Children's Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Maliheh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khoddami
authors.affiliation: Pediatric Pathology Research Center, Mofid Children's Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Farzaneh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jadali
keywords: Demography; Pediatric brain tumors; Pediatric spinal tumors; Trends