This comprehensive, yet practical, text is a ready collection of the most up-to-date information on primary CNS tumors. Authored by a carefully selected group of the world’s leading clinicians and scientists, the book is divided into three sections. The opening chapters cover general principles, including epidemiology, pathogenesis, tumor stem cells, supportive care, complications of therapy, and quality of life. The remaining two sections are comprised of treatment-oriented chapters covering the spectrum of gliomas and rarer tumor types. Each of these chapters presents multi-disciplinary therapeutic approaches and addresses specific disease concerns. Throughout, the authors incorporate the cutting-edge advances in molecular biology and genomics that are revolutionizing neuro-oncology. The result is an important clinical resource which provides evidence-based data and interpretation essential to intelligent therapeutic decision making.

Since the late 1960s, the survival rate in children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer has steadily improved, with a corresponding decline in the cancer-specific death rate. Although the improvements in survival are encouraging, they have come at the cost of acute, chronic, and late adverse effects precipitated by the toxicities associated with the individual or combined use of different types of treatment (e.g., surgery, radiation, chemotherapy). In some cases, the impairments resulting from cancer and its treatment are severe enough to qualify a child for U.S. Social Security Administration disability benefits. At the request of Social Security Administration, Childhood Cancer and Functional Impacts Across the Care Continuum provides current information and findings and conclusions regarding the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of selected childhood cancers, including different types of malignant solid tumors, and the effect of those cancers on childrenâ (TM)s health and functional capacity, including the relative levels of functional limitation typically associated with the cancers and their treatment. This report also provides a summary of selected treatments currently being studied in clinical trials and identifies any limitations on the availability of these treatments, such as whether treatments are available only in certain geographic areas.

Though the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) tumors has been challenging, new advances have helped us better understand the molecular and genetic makeup of many tumor types, and new chemotherapies and immunotherapies have extended survival in patients with aggressive primary CNS tumors. This book discusses pediatric and adult tumors of the CNS, the classification schemes used to categorize them, advances in surgical techniques, and several important genetic alterations found in these tumors. We hope this book contributes to the reader’s understanding of these tumors and provides the most up-to-date and cutting-edge discoveries in this exciting field.

Knowledge about the etiology and diagnosis as well as treatment concepts of neu- oncologic diseases is rapidly growing. This turnover of knowledge makes it dif? cult for the physician engaged in the treatment to keep up to date with current therapies. This book sets out to close the gap and pursues several innovative concepts. As a comprehensive text on neuro-oncology, its chapters are interconnected, but at the same time some chapters or subdivisions are so thoroughly assembled that the whole volume gives the impression of several books combined into one. Neuropathology is treated in an extensive and clearly structured section. The int- ested reader ? nds for each tumor entity the latest well-referenced consensus rega- ing histologic and molecular pathology. Through this “book-in-the-book” concept, information on neuropathology is readily at hand in a concise form and without ov- loading the single chapters. Pediatric neuro-oncology differs in many entities from tumors in adult patients; also, certain tumors of the CNS are typically or mainly found only in the child. Therefore, pediatric neuro-oncology was granted its own, book-like section. Tumor entities that are treated differently in children and adults are included both in the pediatric neuro-oncology section and in the general section. Entities that typically occur only in the child and adolescent are found in the pediatric section in order to avoid redundancies.

The second edition of this concise reference book was prepared by 106 authors from 21 countries and covers the neuro-oncological literature until January 2000. Diagnostic criteria, pathological features and associated genetic alterations are described in a strictly disease-oriented manner. Sections on more than 70 neoplasms and their variants include ICD-O codes, incidence, age and sex distribution, location, clinical signs and symptoms, pathology, genetics and predictive factors. New disease entities include the chordoid glioma of the third ventricle and the cerebellar liponeurocytoma. Inherited tumor syndromes involving the nervous system are dealt with in a separate chapter, combining diagnostic criteria, pathology and genetics.

WHO Classification of Tumours of the Central Nervous System is the revised fourth edition of the WHO series on histological and genetic typing of human tumors. This authoritative, concise reference book provides an international standard for oncologists and pathologists and will serve as an indispensable guide for use in the design of studies monitoring response to therapy and clinical outcome. Diagnostic criteria, pathological features, and associated genetic alterations are described in a disease-oriented manner. Sections on all recognized neoplasms and their variants include new ICD-O codes, epidemiology, clinical features, macroscopy, pathology, genetics, and prognosis and predictive factors. The book, prepared by 122 authors from 19 countries, contains more than 800 color images and tables, and more than 2800 references. This book is in the series commonly referred to as the "Blue Book" series.

The child is neither an adult miniature nor an immature human being: at each age, it expresses specific abilities that optimize adaptation to its environment and development of new acquisitions. Diseases in children cover all specialties encountered in adulthood, and neurology involves a particularly large area, ranging from the brain to the striated muscle, the generation and functioning of which require half the genes of the whole genome and a majority of mitochondrial ones. Human being nervous system is sensitive to prenatal aggression, is particularly immature at birth and development may be affected by a whole range of age-dependent disorders distinct from those that occur in adults. Even diseases more often encountered in adulthood than childhood may have specific expression in the developing nervous system. The course of chronic neurological diseases beginning before adolescence remains distinct from that of adult pathology – not only from the cognitive but also motor perspective, right into adulthood, and a whole area is developing for adult neurologists to care for these children with persisting neurological diseases when they become adults. Just as pediatric neurology evolved as an identified specialty as the volume and complexity of data became too much for the general pediatician or the adult neurologist to master, the discipline has now continued to evolve into so many subspecialties, such as epilepsy, neuromuscular disease, stroke, malformations, neonatal neurology, metabolic diseases, etc., that the general pediatric neurologist no longer can reasonably possess in-depth expertise in all areas, particularly in dealing with complex cases. Subspecialty expertise thus is provided to some trainees through fellowship programmes following a general pediatric neurology residency and many of these fellowships include training in research. Since the infectious context, the genetic background and medical practice vary throughout the world, this diversity needs to be represented in a pediatric neurology textbook. Taken together, and although brain malformations (H. Sarnat & P. Curatolo, 2007) and oncology (W. Grisold & R. Soffietti) are covered in detail in other volumes of the same series and therefore only briefly addressed here, these considerations justify the number of volumes, and the number of authors who contributed from all over the world. Experts in the different subspecialties also contributed to design the general framework and contents of the book. Special emphasis is given to the developmental aspect, and normal development is reminded whenever needed – brain, muscle and the immune system. The course of chronic diseases into adulthood and ethical issues specific to the developing nervous system are also addressed. - A volume in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology series, which has an unparalleled reputation as the world's most comprehensive source of information in neurology - International list of contributors including the leading workers in the field - Describes the advances which have occurred in clinical neurology and the neurosciences, their impact on the understanding of neurological disorders and on patient care