Cerebral Tumors in Infancy

Abstract

CEREBRAL TUMORS are not rare in children. In a general pediatric service they represented 0.10% to 0.40% of admissions¹; in a statistical survey of the Gustave Roussy Institute,² 11.5% of malignant tumors in children were cerebral tumors. Before the age of 2 years, cerebral tumors seem to be fairly rare.^3,4 Our survey was made in several Parisian hospitals. It was carried out during the period from 1947 to 1964 for the Hôpital des Enfants Malades and that of La Pitié, and from 1958 to 1964 for the other hospitals. Thus we can report on the study of 66 clinicoanatomical observations in which the first frank signs appeared in the first two years of life.^5,6 Existence of an expanding intracranial lesion was confirmed by neuroradiological investigations: in 42 cases by ventriculography, in nine others by fractional gas encephalography, in another by carotid angiography. The neoplastic nature of