Surgical Management and Outcome of Adult Posterior Cranial Fossa and Spinal Hemangioblastoma: A 6-Case Series and Literature Review

Excerpt

Hemangioblastomas are infrequent and benign tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) with no metastatic potential [1] that mostly affect the cerebellum [2], brainstem [3], and spinal cord [4,5]. Sporadic posterior fossa hemangioblastomas tend to occur most often in the fifth decade of life and are more common in males [6,7]. Spinal hemangioblastomas, on the contrary, rarely occur in patients over 65 years of age [8], although the prevalence may be higher than expected [9]. Multiple tumors nearly always occur earlier in life and are associated with Von Hippel–Lindau disease (VHLD) [2,6,10–12], autosomal dominant genetic disorder linked to a defect on chromosome 3, and the mutation of the VHL tumor suppressor gene [10,13,14]. Despite their scarcity, hemangioblastomas of the spinal cord are the third....