Postoperative radiotherapy in cranial ganglioglioma

We performed an institutional database search for patients with ganglioglioma in order to evaluate postoperative radiotherapy in the light of our experience. This search identified 5 patients with a mean age of 23.3 (range, 9-54 years) treated between April 1994 and April 2003. The latter date was chosen to allow a minimum follow-up of 1 year at the time of our analysis. Median follow up was 7 years (range, 1.5-11 years). Gross total tumor resection could only be achieved in one case, while other four patients had been referred after subtotal tumor excisions. All patients were treated postoperatively with conventionally fractionated (1.8-2 Gy/day) external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) to a total dose of 54-60 Gy. Patients were treated with megavoltage beams using Co(60 )or 6-MV photons. None of the patients were lost to follow up with a median follow up time of 80 months (range, 5.5-122.5 months) and all patients were alive with no evidence of disease at last follow-up. We believe that long term follow-up is necessary to observe the relapse patterns and the significance of postoperative radiotherapy needs to be further evaluated with large patient numbers to remark a conclusive statement.