A review of Craniopharyngioma and the retrospective study on 100 patients

This study was performed in order to improve the knowledge about Craniopharyngioma tumors, and tried to present extensive datas about the signs and symptoms, the clinical process and the treatments and their complications of the patients with Craniopharyngioma, admitted in the hospitals of Tehran university during 15 years (1355-70). Ultimately, these datas have been compared with those in the reputable books and new medical papers; And the results are present at the end of the discussion. Undoubtedly, this study is not free of the limitations of retrospective studies. Our patients-contrary to the textbooks are predominantly males; And also their most common chief complaints are neurological manifestations, and headache (82%) is the most common one. There is only a little difference in the prevalence of some of the endocrinologic and ophthalmic manifestations between our datas and what in the texts, while, in some others, we can see a great diversity between the 2. For instance, decreased libido in men and amenorrhea in women, among our patients are prominently less than what we study in the books; And blood pressure disturbances, sensory and motor symptoms and urinary incontinence have not been seen in our patients. In most cases, CT scan leads to diagnosis and its diagnostic accuracy in 2 times higher than that of the simple radiography and it can show the sella enlargement obviously. In a majority of cases (More than 95%), excision a part of the tumor (From just limited to the biopsy area to 90% of tumor mass) was the only therapeutic measure. In only a few patients, tumor excision was followed by radiotherapy, that showed the better results. The most common delayed complication was the recurrence of the disease