Gait analysis in children treated by surgery followed by adjuvant therapy for posterior fossa tumors.

Children affected by posterior fossa tumors show signs and symptoms of neurological dysfunction, associated both to cancer itself and to cancer therapies. Abnormal gait and coordination difficulties are frequent presenting features. Radiation therapy represents the main adjuvant treatment for these patients.

Efficacy of pegylated lyposomal anthracyclines and of intra-arterial carboplatin and doxorubicin combined with local hyperthermia in a case of malignant endovascular papillary angioendothelioma.

Malignant vascular tumors are exceedingly rare in childhood. Generally, their prognosis is dependent from a microscopically complete surgical resection. We observed the case of a 4-year-old boy affected by malignant endovascular papillary angioendothelioma, a rare vascular tumor of intermediate malignancy, involving all his left leg and partially the pelvis.

The role of transventricular neuroendoscopy in the management of craniopharyngiomas: three patient reports and review of the literature.

Background: Management of craniopharyngiomas is problematic and often requires multimodal protocols. In the last decade neuroendoscopy has been increasingly used in the management of these lesions.

Patient Reports: We report three cases of craniopharyngiomas in which various endsocopic procedures were performed.

Second-line chemotherapy with the association of liposomal daunorubicin, carboplatin and etoposide in children with recurrent malignant brain tumors.

Progressive or recurrent high-grade gliomas are characterized by a very poor prognosis, and the relevance of second-line chemotherapy is still unassessed. Although it has been reported that liposomal anthracyclines and carboplatin show some activity in these patients, their association has never been investigated. We have treated six children with recurrent high-grade glioma after surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and one child with progressive teratoid/rhabdoid tumor with the combination of liposomal daunorubicin and carboplatin plus etoposide.

Orbital rhabdomyosarcoma: relationship between DNA ploidy, p53, bcl-2, MDR-1 and Ki67 (MIB1) expression and clinical behavior.

Background: As for rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) of other anatomic regions, the evaluation of traditional clinicopathological parameters does not allow the unequivocal outcome prediction of the single cases of orbital RMS. We investigated the role of DNA ploidy and immunohistochemical expression of p53, bcl-2, MDR-1 and Ki67 (MIB1) in the prognostic evaluation of orbital rhabdomyosarcomas.

Materials And Methods: The study population consisted of 11 selected cases.

Efficacy of sequential chemotherapy including methotrexate and doxorubicin in an infant with partially resected choroid plexus carcinoma.

This report refers to a 3-month-old male, with a residual choroid plexus carcinoma following partial resection, who was successfully treated with sequential chemotherapy without any postoperative radiation therapy. Along with carboplatin, we also used doxorubicin and methotrexate, hypothesizing that, given the patient's age, the blood-brain barrier should not hamper drug delivery to the tumor. According to this hypothesis, the treatment achieved complete remission of the disease, which lasts 27 months after the diagnosis.

Cytogenetic evaluation of isochromosome 17q in posterior fossa tumors of children and correlation with clinical outcome in medulloblastoma. Detection of a novel chromosomal abnormality.

Background: A number of chromosomal abnormalities have been described in the presence of central nervous system tumors; isochromosome 17q, representing a loss of heterozygosity for the short arm of the chromosome 17, is the one most frequently reported in association with medulloblastoma. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic correlation of this variable, compared with other variables (surgery extent and radiotherapy), with survival.

Methods And Results: We looked for the presence of i(17q) in 32 children affected by posterior fossa tumors, including 16 medulloblastomas and 2 teratoid/rhabdoid tumors.