Epidemiologic and histologic characteristics of central nervous system lesions: A 20-year experience of a single institution in Lebanon.

Abstract

e13544 Background: Lesions of the central nervous system (CNS) are a heterogeneous group of tumoral and non-tumoral lesions, benign or malignant, primary or metastatic. The overall incidence rate of all brain tumors is estimated to be 10.82 per 100 000 person-years. There is no data in Lebanon characterizing the CNS lesions. The aim of our study is to report the epidemiologic and histologic characteristics of these lesions in a Lebanese tertiary center. Methods: This is a retrospective study evaluating the characteristics of the CNS lesions diagnosed in 20 years (from January 1998 to June 2017) in the pathology laboratory of Hôtel Dieu de France, Saint Joseph University hospital of Beirut, Lebanon. The data were extracted from the computerized records of the laboratory. Different variables were evaluated, from the samples types and epidemiologic characteristics, to the revealing symptoms and the histologic subtypes. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 24.0. Results: 2025 tumoral lesions over 20 years were interpreted. 25.4% of the samples were obtained by biopsy, 65% by surgical resection, 3.7% were cerebral spinal fluid and 5.9% were undetermined. 52.2% of the patients were men and 47.8% were women with a median age of 50 years, from 0 to 89 years. The most frequent revealing symptoms were epilepsy (22.5%), headache (20.6%) and motor impairment (19.9%). 90.7% of the CNS tumors were primary and 9.3% were metastatic. Lung (35.6%) and breast (16.5 %) were the two most frequent primaries of the metastatic lesions. 46.2% of primary CNS tumors were glial, 42.5% non-glial, 3.5% mixed neuroglial and 6.4% mesenchymal. The two most frequent glial tumors were astrocytic (56.4%) and oligodendroglial (17.9%) tumors, while the most frequent non-glial tumors were meningeal tumors (58%) and cranial nerve and paraspinal tumors (16.3%). Conclusions: The histological and epidemiological characteristics of brain tumors in Lebanon are consistent in many features with what is known in the literature, but the Lebanese population differs by a younger age of onset, a lower rate of meningiomas, and a higher rate of gliomas.