Intracranial germ cell tumors (ICGCT) occur in 2-11% of children with brain tumors between 0-19 years of age. For treatment of germinoma, relatively low radiation doses with or without chemotherapy show excellent 10 year survival rate of 80-100%. Past studies showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy combined with focal radiotherapy resulted in unacceptably high rates of periventricular tumor recurr...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the effectivity of fractionated radiotherapy in adolescent and adult patients with pineal parenchymal tumors (PPT). METHODS Between 1982 and 2003, 14 patients with PPTs were treated with fractionated radiotherapy. 4 patients had a pineocytoma (PC), one a PPT with intermediate differentiation (PPTID) and 9 patients a pineoblastoma (PB), 2 of which were recurrences. All p...

Pineal parenchymal tumors are rare. Of the three types of pineal parenchymal tumors, pineocytomas are the least aggressive and are not known to diffusely disseminate. In this paper, we report the successful treatment of a case of pineocytoma with diffuse leptomeningeal relapse following initial stereotactic radiotherapy. A 39-year-old female presented with headaches, balance impairment, urinary...

New advances in radiation therapy for children allow increased conformability and reduced doses to non-target tissues. We report our experience in treating a 4-year-old child with craniospinal tomotherapy after surgery of the primary tumor, a supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumor. The tomotherapy plan was compared with conventional craniospinal irradiation, 3D conformal radiation thera...

BACKGROUND We conducted a nonrandomized international study for intracranial germinoma that compared chemotherapy followed by local radiotherapy with reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation (CSI) alone, to determine whether the combined treatment regimen produced equivalent outcome and avoided irradiation beyond the primary tumor site(s). METHODS Patients with localized germinoma received eithe...

Introduction: Craniospinal radiotherapy is a therapeutic technique for central nervous system (CNS) tumors, which requires meticulous attention to technique and dosimetry.Treatment planning system (TPS) is one of the main equipment in radiotherapy; therefore, the evaluation of its accuracy is essential for dose calculation. The present study evaluates the validity of Isogray TPS in craniospinal...

Background Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) is a cancer predisposition disorder characterized by germline mutations of the p53 tumor-suppressor gene. In response to DNA damage, p53 stimulates protective cellular processes including cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis to prevent aberrant cell proliferation. Current cancer therapies involve agents that damage DNA, which also affect non-cancerous hematopoie...

Radiation therapy has an important role in postoperative treatment of neoplasms originated from central nervous system, but may induce secondary malignancies like as sarcomas, gliomas, and meningiomas. The prognosis of radiation-induced osteosarcomas is known as poor, because they has aggressive nature invasive locally and intractable to multiple treatment strategies like as surgical resection,...