Radiotherapy of primary brain stem tumors

This paper presents results of treatment for 80 patients with primary brain stem tumors who were seen at McGill University Hospitals from 1960–1975. A large proportion of the patients were under 15 years old. The majority of pretreatment diagnoses were based on neuroradiologic procedures. The correlation of these procedures in histologically verified cases is high. Glioblastoma comprised 38.7 % of the histologically proven cases. Radiotherapy was the main modality of the treatment. Of the patients who received over 5000 rod, 44/63 (39.8°10) survived at 3 years, 34.5 % at 5 years and 28.4 % at 10 years. This result is similar to that in Bouchard's series which analyzed the cases from the same source prior to this series. The initial response to treatment was beneficial in the majority of patients and this early response appears to be a dependable prognostic parameter.