Characterization of Brain Tumors in Colombia: A 10-Year Period

Introduction: Central nervous system tumors are rare; in 2015 they represented approximately 1.4% of new cancer diagnoses, causing 2.6% of deaths by cancer that year. Their prevalence decreases over time: between the ages of 0 to 14 years, these constitute the first cause of neoplasia, between 15 and 39 years they correspond to the third most frequent cause followed by breast and thyroid cancer, and in patients older than 40 years, it is among the rarest form of neoplasms. Given these data, knowledge about its incidence, mortality and epidemiology is necessary to develop and carry out health policies and diagnostic screening. In our country there are few reports, and those that do exist are based off of local population. Due to the limited epidemiological information, this work aims to characterize the epidemiology of brain tumors in Colombia over a period of 10 years, collected from population records in different cities of our country.

Materials and Methods: A retrospective descriptive observational study was conducted, using databases of population-based cancer registries in Colombia. We extracted information from the past 10 years recorded in patients with tumors without age group restriction. A descriptive analysis was performed for all the variables considered, the incidences and mortalities were calculated, and, for selected subgroups, the survival analysis using the Kaplan-Meier method statistical software Stata 14.0 was used.

Results: Our analysis was performed with a cancer registry of 4 cities in Colombia, in a period from 2003 to 2012, a population of 775 adult patients and 123 pediatric patients, with an incidence of 1.55 per 100.000 individuals in the pediatric population and 3.19 per 100.000 individuals in the adult population. The mortality rate for pediatric and adult patients was 0.063 per 100.000 individuals and 1.86 per 100.000 individuals, respectively. The most frequent tumors in the pediatric age group were neuroepithelial tumors, embryonal tumors and ependymal tumors, whereas for adults, the most frequent were neuroepithelial tumors, meningiomas and hematolymphoid tumors. The global survival rates at 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years were in the pediatric population around 49.85, 35.17, 13.38, and 13.38%, respectively, and for adults, the survival rates were around 70.17, 58.87, 25.61, and 19.79%, respectively.

Conclusion: The present work constitutes the most recent and multicentric study on the epidemiology of brain tumors in Colombia. There was a clear underreport of this type of tumor in our country, which limits the generalization of our results. Despite this, these results will help create health policies, and therefore interventions in the health system and regulating entities.

Fig. 1 (A) Kaplan–Meier curve for pediatric global survival. (B) Kaplan–Meier curve for adult global survival. (C) Kaplan–Meier curve for pediatric survival by histology. (D) Kaplan–Meier curve for adult survival by histology.