Clinicopathological Characteristics of Meningiomas: Experience from a Tertiary Care Hospital in the Kashmir Valley

Meningiomas comprise 15%-20% of all primary intracranial tumors. They are generally benign tumors, and most patients are cured after surgery and remain free of recurrence. However, some tumors behave in an aggressive manner, and patients develop local recurrence or metastasis. Overall prognosis is good.

This is an 11-year retrospective study conducted in the Departments of Pathology and Neurosurgery at Sheri-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Kashmir, India. Besides the demographic profile, the parameters analyzed were location of tumor on imaging, histopathological subtype, and grade of tumor according to the 2007 WHO classification and recurrence at follow-up.

A total of 254 patients were included in our study, of which 205 (80.7%) were brain meningiomas and 49 (19.3%) were spinal, with an overall female: male ratio of 2:1. Female: male ratio was more in spinal meningiomas, 15.3:1. Most of our patients were in the 4-6^th decade of life with a mean age of 48 years (range: 5-73 years). Meningothelial meningioma was the most common histological type. Of ten patients who showed recurrence, seven cases showed only recurrence, but no progression to higher grade and three cases showed recurrence with progression by one WHO-grade. We also noticed that recurrence was higher in Simpson Grades II and III.

Meningiomas are common in females and most of the meningiomas do well after surgery. The recurrence rate was 3.93% in our study and Simpson grade of tumor excision and histopathological grade contribute significantly to the recurrence of the tumor.