Effect of Roentgenotherapy on Gliomas

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

While there are a number of reports dealing with the effect of irradiation on patients with tumor of the brain, few studies of the histologic changes so produced have been made. Alpers and Pancoast¹studied a series of twenty-two cases of glioma in which specimens were available before and after treatment. Like Bailey,²they found medulloblastoma to be sensitive to roentgen rays. Alpers and Pancoast reported changes in ependymoma following roentgen irradiation (increase in connective tissue stroma, thickening of the blood vessels and increase in necrosis). No appreciable change was observed in oligodendroglioma, astrocytoma or glioblastoma. Brody and German³concluded that fibrosis follows roentgenotherapy in cases of medulloblastoma. Deery⁴reported a study of fifty cases of glioma in which preirradiation and postirradiation specimens were available. Some of the tumors of each of the three types (medulloblastoma, glioblastoma and astrocytoma), constituting most of the series, showed "striking