[Clinical and microscopic findings In 71 cases of craniopharyngioma referred to Tehran Shariati Hospital]

ABSTRACT

Craniopharyngiomas make up about 1-3 percent of primary tumors of the CNS. This tumor can develop at any time from birth to old age, but more than 50% of patients are younger than 20 years. Most of them are suprasellar, but nearly 25% have an intrasellar component. Most of the clinical manifestation of tumor are related to their compressive effects, and include headache, visual disturbance, hydrocephalus and endocrine abnormalities. Two distinct variants of craniopharyngioma are recognized, the classic adamantinomatous type and a recently described papillary form. In this study we describe clinicopathologic findings of 71 patients diagnosed with craniophayngioma. The majority of patients were male, patients age ranged between 4 to 51 years and headache was the commonest presenting symptom. Microscopically most of them were adamantinomatous type and only 5 cases were papillary type. The most common post operative complication was recurrence of disease, and all of them were adamantinomatous type