Role of computed tomography in the evaluation of pediatric brain tumor

A total of forty two clinically diagnosed pediatric brain tumors were studied over a period of two years. The study was aimed to evaluate the efficacy of computed tomography (CT) in pre-operative diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors by correlating the imaging findings with postoperative histopathological findings. Site, density, mass effect and contrast enhancement of the lesion were studied as primary efficacy variables of CT scan. In the present study, the common pediatric brain tumors were astrocytoma, medulloblastoma, craniopharyngioma and ependymoma. In 18(42.9%) cases the tumors were supratentorial and in 24 (57.1%), they were infratentorial in location. The findings of CT scan in different intracranial neoplasm strongly correlated with those of histopathology. The validity tests for CT scan were found to be 88.9% sensitive, 100% specific and about 95% accurate in diagnosing astrocytoma. Similarly the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for medulloblastoma were 100%, 96.9% and 97.7% respectively. For craniopharyngioma the values were 85.7%, 100% and 97.7% respectively. The study concludes that CT is an invaluable imaging modality in preoperative diagnosis of pediatric brain tumor due to its excellent characterization of tumors.