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Surgery of Spinal Cord Tumors Based on Anatomy pp 7–25Cite as

Pathology of the Spinal Cord Tumors

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Abstract

The spinal cord is a continuum of the central nervous system (CNS), in which all tumors occur, which develops in the brain. Intradural spinal tumors are rare CNS tumors, comprising 2%–4% of CNS tumors. Here, a total of 892 adult spinal cord tumors from the archives of the Seoul National University Hospital, from January 2010 to December 2018, were analyzed and discussed. Among them, the most frequent primary spinal cord tumors were extra-axial tumors (68% of intradural spinal cord tumors [ID-SCT]), the second most common tumors were glioma ependymoma, subependymoma, myxopapillary ependymoma and astrocytic tumors (17.6% of ID-SCT), hemangioblastoma (5% of ID-SCT), and others including vascular malformation (5%), metastatic tumor (5% of ID-SCT), and chordoma (0.7% of ID-SCT). The most common extra-axial tumors were schwannoma (47% of ID-SCT), meningioma (16% of ID-SCT), neurofibroma (2% of ID-SCT) and malignant peripheral nervous tumor (<1% of ID-SCT) in order of frequency. The common gliomas were ependymoma (11% of ID-SCT), astrocytic tumors (4% of ID-SCT), myxopapillary ependymoma (3% of ID-SCT) and subependymoma (<1% of ID-SCT). The other tumor-like lesions were vascular malformation (5% of ID-SCT, n = 43) including cavernous, capillary. and arteriovenous malformation. Rare tumors were paraganglioma (1% of ID-SCT), chordoma (<1% of ID-SCT) and malignant melanoma (0.3% of ID-SCT). Metastatic tumors were similar incidence with hemangioblastoma (5%). The incidence of these spinal cord tumors of our hospital was similar to previously reported incidence. Intramedullary and extramedullary spinal cord tumors comprised approximately 5%–10% and 70%–80%, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea

    Sung-Hye Park

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  1. Sung-Hye Park
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Correspondence to Sung-Hye Park .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Chun Kee Chung

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Park, SH. (2021). Pathology of the Spinal Cord Tumors. In: Chung, C.K. (eds) Surgery of Spinal Cord Tumors Based on Anatomy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7771-0_2

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