Survival status of children with cerebellar gliomas

Abstract

The goals of this study were to determine how well a multivariate analytic procedure shortly after surgery would have classified children with cerebellar glioma according to expected survival status (alive or dead) 5 yr later, and to identify histological, clinical and other features that contributed most to the classification. Fifteen of the 76 (20%) children in this study died before the end of the 5th postoperative year. The linear discriminant function (LDF) constructed with the 4 histological features of microcysts, high cell density, oligodendroglia and endothelial proliferation, misclassified outcome in only 8 children and discriminated as well as the LDF constructed with 12 additional histological features. The LDF constructed with 8 symptoms and 12 signs had a misclassification rate of 9.2%, and was no more successful than the LDF constructed with the single symptom of lethargy. The LDF constructed with all 42 variables misclassified only 3 children. The variables that contributed most to successful analysis were altered consciousness, microcysts, oligondendroglia, high cell density, endothelial proliferation and perivascular desmoplasia. Multivariate analysis of histological features, symptoms and signs appears to classify children with cerebellar glioma according to survival status with an acceptably low error.