[Pathological features of dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor (DNT): study of five surgical cases with intractable...

The dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor (DNT), characterized by its favorable prognosis, must be precisely differentiated from other gliomas to prevent overtreatment by radio/chemotherapy. We studied, here, pathological features of five surgical cases of DNT with intractable epilepsies. There were two males and three females with a median age of 20.4 years (range 12-41). We evaluated lesional topography, gross appearances and microscopic findings including immunohistochemical data. One tumor was located in the temporal lobe, another two in the parietal lobe, another in the occipital lobe, and the other one in the occipito-parietal junction. The lesions were predominantly intracortical in all cases. Macroscopically, two tumors were grayish-soft, another two were yellowish-elastic, and the other one was resected as soft-mucinous fragments. Microscopically, the main glial components were oligodendrocyte-like cells (OLCs) in all cases, except for one case in which atypical glial cells were also prominent. Histopathological characteristics of the DNTs included the specific glioneuronal elements (the mixture of OLCs and neurons) in four cases, alveolar pattern (all cases), microcystic degeneration (all cases), multinodular architecture (four cases), and adjacent cortical dysplasia (all cases). Immunohistochemically, Ki-67 labelling indices ranged from 0 to 0.8%. OLCs were positive for glial fibrillary acidic protein in two cases, for S-100 protein in all cases, for synaptophysin in two cases, and for class III beta tubulin in all cases. Pathological features of our cases were characterized by its heterogeneous histological appearances and divergent cellular differentiation.