BRAIN TUMORS AMONG MOROCCAN ADOLESCENTS IN THE REGION OF RABAT-SALE-KENITRA, MOROCCO

Abstract

Brain tumours refer to all tumors, both benign and malignant, which develop in the cerebral parenchyma. In Africa, including Morocco, there is a paucity of descriptive brain tumors data. The aim of this study to describe the epidemiological profile of brain tumors types among Moroccan adolescents. Our study is a descriptive epidemiological study targeting all ado- lescent patients, aged between 10 and 19, suffering from a brain tumor and admitted from January 1 to December 31, 2020, to the neuro- surgery department of the Hospital of Specialities-CHU-Rabat-Mo- rocco. During these period, the neurosurgery department admitted 179 patients diagnosed with a brain tumor, including 18 adolescents, which represents 10.05% of all admitted patients. The 18 teenagers found include 11 females patients and 7 males patients which means a sex-ratio Male/Female of 0,64. The average age of our patients is 13.05 years, with extremities ranging from 10 to 19 years. It was found that for the topographic distribution 50% of tumors are infratentorial and 50% are supratentorial. The most presented re- vealing symptomatology is headaches (12 patients, 66.67%). The other symptoms experienced by patients were fatigability (11 patients), diziness (10 patients), vomiting (8 patients), weightloss (8 patients), seizures (6 patients), visual disturbances (5 patients), balance disorder (4 patients), hemiparesis (3 patients), hypoacusis (2 patients) and other. We found that Astrocytomas come in first position of diagnosed tumors with a percentage of 22.22% followed by Vestibular schwannoma and Craniopharyngioma with a percentage of 16.67% each. The topographic diagnosis finds an infra-tentorial localization equal to the supratentorial localization with 50% each. A rare tumor was detected in our study, which is hemangiopericytoma in a 15-year-old male patient. The epidemiological profile of brain tumors in Morocco and more specifically in the Rabat-Salé-Kenitra region has similarities with other studies in Morocco and also presents differences. However, other multicenter studies are necessary in our country to establish a Moroccan national registry of brain tumors that can be used for other epidemiological studies on a continental scale.