Diagnóstico diferencial en patología tumoral de la base de cráneo anterior / Differential diagnosis in tumor pathology of the anterior skull base

ABSTRACT

Objective. To describe a series of tumoral lesions of the anterior fossa that were treated at the Hospital de Clinicas during a determined lapse of time.Material and Methods. We evaluated the image archive and medical charts of all the patients operated on between January 2005 and May 2009 at the Neurosurgery Division of the Hospital de Clínicas. Results. From a total of 142 surgeries for expansive supratentorial lessions, 19 were for lessions of the anterior skull base (n=19) of which 7 were meningiomas (36%); four patients with gliomas (21%); one with GBM (5%); one with astrocitoma (5%); two with oligodendroglioma (10%); three patients presented tumors of the paranasal sinuses (15%); two had mucoceles (10%); one with squamous cell carcinoma (5%); three with orbital tumors; one with fibrous bone dysplasia (5%) and one with metastasis of a meduloblastoma of the posterior fossa (5%). Conclusion. The most frequent pathology found at this site is the meningioma, and secondly, gliomas. The third in frequency are the paranasal sinus tumors whose most malignant pathology is the squamous cell carcinoma. Our findings are statistically correspondent to other large series in literature.