Meduloblastomas del adulto: serie quirúrgica de 11 casos

introduction: medulloblastomas are malignant, invasive and highly cellular tumours from the cerebellum, rarely seen in adults. we describe the experience in the treatment of this entity in our institution. materials and methods: a retrospective study was made including 11 adult patients with medulloblastomas confined to the craniospinal axis treated between 1984-2010. clinical, radiological and therapeutic data were assessed during the evolution of this entity. results: mean age of patients was 30,2 years (9 women/2 men). over 80% of the patients presented intracranial hypertension, while 54,5% presented cerebellum syndrome. gross total surgical resection was achieved in 8 patients (72,7%) and subtotal resection in the other 3 (27,3%). all patients received craniospinal radiotherapy. after primary surgical resection, 6 patients received chemotherapy with cisplatin (cddp) and etoposide (vp-16). during the follow up period and after a median time of 35,2 months, 4 patients (36,4%) presented with relapse, mainly in the posterior cranial fossa, managed in the majority of cases with surgical resection plus additional chemotherapy. mean survival time was 100,3 months with a 5-and 8-year overall survival rate of 84 and 56% respectively. conclusions: in the treatment of this malignancy, gross surgical resection has a crucial role, followed as soon as possible by oncological therapy, specially radiotherapy and chemotherapy if needed.