A five-year interval study of primary brain tumors in Alzahra Hospital in Esfahan

Background: About half of all brain tumors are primary, and the remainder are metastatic. Tumors of the nervous system have unique characteristics that set them apart from neoplastic processes elsewhere in the body. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified central nervous system (CNS) tumors as grades I to IV in increasing order of malignancy. The goal of this study was to follow the sex, age, and anatomic site distribution of primary brain tumors and the frequency of various pathologic types and WHO grades of these neoplasms. Materials and methods: In this five-year interval study, 400 patients with primary brain tumors who were admitted to Alzahra Hospital in Esfahan were studied. Results: There were no significant differences in the frequency of primary brain tumors between males and females. Most patients were over 35 years old, and most of the lesions were located in the hemispheres. Meningioma was the most frequent type of tumor, and most of the cases matched grade I of the WHO grading system for CNS tumors. Conclusions: In contrast to the obtained results, other studies in this field show that the preponderance of primary brain tumors occur in males, and most of the studies mention gliomas as the most frequent type of primary CNS tumors.