CNS Oncology (Jun 2020)

Epidemiologic and histologic characteristics of CNS lesions: a 20-year experience of a tertiary center in Lebanon

  • Roland Eid,
  • Stephanie Hage,
  • Ingrid Antonios,
  • Rita Moussa,
  • Makram Khoury,
  • Fady Ghassan Haddad,
  • Hampig Raphael Kourie,
  • Carole Kesrouani,
  • Claude Ghorra,
  • Gerard Abadjian,
  • Joseph Kattan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2217/cns-2020-0001
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 2

Abstract

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Aim: Report the epidemiologic and histologic characteristics of CNS lesions in the Lebanese population. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study evaluating 2025 CNS lesions diagnosed between 1998 and 2017 in the pathology laboratory of a Lebanese tertiary center. Results: 52.2% of patients were men with a median age of 50 years. The most frequent symptoms were epilepsy (22.5%), headache (20.6%) and motor impairment (19.9%). 90.7% of tumors were primary. Lung (35.6%) and breast (16.5%) were the most frequent primaries of metastases. 46.2% of primary CNS tumors were glial, predominantly astrocytic (56.4%), and (42.5%) were nonglial, predominantly meningeal tumors (58%). Conclusion: Compared with Western literature, the Lebanese population is characterized by a younger age of onset of brain tumors, a lower rate of meningiomas and a higher rate of gliomas.

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