CNS Tumors Flashcards
What is the difference between Primary and Secondary Tumors?
Primary originate in CNS
Secondary are metastatic from sites outside the CNS
What are the characteristics of benign tumors?
What are the characteristics of malignant tumors?
Benign- slow growing, does not spread, and does not invade tissue
Malignant- Fast growing, spreads, and invades tissues
What is a grade 1 tumor on the WHO Grading System?
Benign
Slow-growing, low proliferative potential
associated w/ long-term survival
What is a grade 2 tumor on the WHO Grading System?
- Benign or Malignant
- Relatively-slow growing, low proliferation, but sometimes recur as higher grade tumors
- prognosis: typically survive more than 5 years post diagnosis
What is a grade 3 tumor on the WHO Grading System?
- Malignant and often recur as higher grade tumors
- Treatment includes radiation or chemotherapy
- Prognosis: survive 2-3 years post diagnosis
What is a grade 4 tumor on the WHO Grading System?
- Reproduce rapidly and are very aggressive malignant tumors
- miotically active disease
- prognosis is usually fatal; majority of individuals w/ glioblastomas succumb to disease within the year, whereas medullablastoma w/ treatment has a 5 year survival rate
What are the histological features the WHO classification uses?
- similarity to normal
- rate of growth
- presence of central necrotic cells
- margins of characteristics
- vascularity
What are the three types of tumors of nueroepithelial tissue? (glial cell tumors/gliomas)
- Astrocytomas
- Oligodendrogliomas
- Primitive Nueroectodermal Tumors (PNET)
What is the most common primary brain tumor in adults?
Where does it typically occur in young adult bodies? Children’s bodies?
Astrocytomas
most often in frontal lobe for young adults
most often in cerebellum in children
Describe each grade (1,2 and 4) of astrocytoma.
Pilocytic (Grade 1): develops mostly in 30-40 year olds, benign, form cysts and slow growing
Low Grade Astrocytoma(Grade 2): same as grade 1 but can be malignant
Glioblastoma multiforme (Grade 4): highly malignant, rapid growth and less than 20% survive past 1 year
How do the majority of oligodendrogliomas present in young adults?
How quickly do they develop?
What is the prognosis?
onset of seizures and headaches due to electrical conductivity problems
usually slow-growing and develop in supratentorial region
median survival is 9 years with 50-75% having a 5 year-survival time
What do PNET (primitive neuroectodermal tumors) tumors develop from?
What is typically the first symptoms detected?
What are the typical signs that form the classic triad for these tumors?
arise from primitive, indifferentiated nerve cells from the gestational development of the nervous system
Increased intracranial pressure (ICP)
morning headache, vomiting, lethargy
What is the most common malignant CNS tumor in children?
Medullablastoma
-arise in the 4th ventricle between brain stem and cerebellum
What are typical cerebellar and brainstem impairments with PNET tumors?
Cerebellar: progressively worsening ataxia
Brainstem: multiple cranial nerve findings such as diplopia, facial weakness, tinitus, hearing loss, head tilt and stiff neck
What is a schwannoma tumor?
Where do the arise from?
Benign or malignant?
Where do impairments arise from?
a tumor of the cranial and paraspinal nerves which was formerly known as acoustic neuromas
arise from vestibular nerve sheath of CN VIII
Benign and slow growing, usually unilateral
impairments arise from compression of CN VIII
-impairments include tinnitus, rapid sensorineural hearing loss (compared to normal rate of loss), facial numbness when tumor reaches around 2.5cm diameter, ataxia if it reaches cerebellum
