[Epidemiology and pathology of spinal tumors]

Spinal tumors are not very frequent; they represent 8-15% of the tumors of the central nervous system. In adulthood, more than a half of them are intradural extramedullary tumors; the most frequent oncotype is neurinoma, followed by meningioma. The frequency of astrocytomas of the spine is comparable with that of the brain, taking into account the different weights of the two organs; on the contrary, the frequency of ependymomas is higher than in the brain. In childhood, spinal tumors are quite infrequent . Some oncotypes are typical of infancy: neuroblastoma, teratoma, sarcoma. The pathological peculiarities of some oncotypes due to the spinal location are discussed.