[Prognosis of brain tumors: epidemiology, survival time and clinical course]

Although the frequency of primary brain tumors is relatively small compared to other tumors such as breast or lung carcinoma, brain tumors affect a particularly young and healthy patient population and possess a high portion of cancer mortality in these age groups. Generally brain tumor diseases influence the professional capacity in younger people and cause significant socioeconomical costs. Prognosis and clinical deterioration of primary brain tumors are determined by histopathological diagnosis first, by tumor location and -volume second. The clinical malignancy of brain tumors, caused by histopathological findings, has not essentially been changed in the last years despite more effective therapies. In contrast refinement in technical standards and computer-assisted micro-surgery makes a valuable progress in the treatment of biological benign brain tumors. Most of these patients recover normal efficiency including former working capability. On the other hand therapeutical nihilism is not supposed to be a sufficient answer to primary brain tumors, because in selected cases a longer lasting stabilization of the disease is possible. In future only through better understanding of the biology of brain tumors and much more effective therapies we can hope to make significant progress in the treatment of these tumors.