Romanian Neurosurgery (Mar 2012)
Long delay cerebral metastases
Abstract
In adults, cerebral metastases are the most common intracranial tumors, and their incidence has been rising in the last decades. The median interval between the diagnosis of the primary cancer and the detection of brain metastasis is relatively short, generally around one or two years. This study made a selection of six cases with a more than five years delay until the diagnosis of a cerebral metastases, from over 246 patients with brain metastases, admitted in our department, between 2006-2010. All six patients underwent surgery for their primary neoplasm, prior to neurosurgical diagnosis and treatment. We found 6 patients, having renal, breast or lung cancer, in which the delay between diagnosis of the primary tumor and that of the brain metastases started from 5 years and reached even 18 years. In all cases, this delay was longer than the median interval found in the most neurosurgical series. Very probably the immune system plays a major role in controlling recurrences and new metastases in the nervous system.
