BRAIN TUMORS REGISTRATION IN BASRAH, A CLINICAL REVIEW OF CASES RECORDED AT 2007

Hassen Hadi¹, Muhmod Swadi², Hussein Omran³ & Abdulrazaq Jasim⁴

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The brain which represent about 5% of the body weight, form about 1.3% of the primary tumors, although it is a common site for metastases. There are a lot of difficulties in finding brain tumor incidence in any population, here it is much more difficult as many cases referred far away for treatments, some still refusing treatment and other may be misdiagnosed. Some of the treatments are still unavailable (Radiotherapy, Radio surgery and shortage of some of the new Chemotherapy drugs).

To start with, we did a review for the record of all cases reported in the neurosurgical wards in 2007, analyzed all that data and compared with available nearby countries.

 Aim of the study:

1.      To register CNS tumor cases at Basrah city  nd  to  provide   age, gender    ,site, histopathology and geographical distribution of tumor cases.

2.      To provide annual report for further studies.

Patients & Methods: A review of CNS tumor cases registered at the neurosurgical wards, Sadar teaching hospital and Almusawi private hospital. We reviewed patients files, 131 cases registered. Assessment of age gender, site, histopathology, and geographical distribution of cases was done.

 Results: For the sum of 131 cases recorded, 66% was from Basrah, 19% from Amara, 10% from Naseria, three cases from Sumawa and one from Hella. The tumor cases recorded are more common at extremes of age, and more common in male gender (60%). The most common site of brain involved is the cerebral hemispheres (57%) and the most common histopathology is  glioma (40%) followed by meningioma (24%). From this review of cases the expected incidence of primary brain tumor in Basrah is 4 /100 000 populations per year. In Asia the brain tumor incidence for 2005 is 3/100000 population per year, while in United state is 14.5 /100 000 population per year.

Conclusion: It is clear that the brain tumor in Basrah and even for south of Iraq are still under estimated as it near the rate in developing countries, where the low rate is explained by poor registration and diagnosis. Great efforts need to be done for proper diagnosis, referral system and registration, the suggestion is to perform annual report and study, for future compares, in order to monitor any changes in its incidence. The depend on the registration system was unpractical, and proper registration should include all available data source about patients from Basrah and south even to follow those who referred far away.

¹Neurosurgeon, FICMS, Head, neurosurgical unit, Sader Teaching hospital.

^(2,3,4)Neurosurgeon,FICMS,  Sader Teaching hospital.