[Therapy and prognosis of the medulloblastoma: progress through late irradiation techniques (author's transl)]

Thirty patients with histologically established medulloblastoma were postoperatively irradiated at the radiological center in Essen. The patients were divided into two groups. Treatment was nonuniform in the first group consisting of 12 patients irradiated between 1969 and 1973. The second group of 18 patients was treated uniformly as regards the combined neurosurgical and radiological concept, and a new irradiation technique at the 5.7-MeV linear accelerator was employed there. While none of the patients in the first group survived longer than three years, in the second group 12 of 18 patients are in a good general state after a follow-up period between 19 and 60 months.