Analysis on therapeutic outcomes and prognostic factors of intracranial ependymoma: a report of 49 clinical cases in a single center

Abstract

Although intracranial ependymoma is relatively rare, it is often associated with great clinical aggressiveness and poor overall survival. There are controversies over factors affecting the prognosis of the disease. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate factors that may affect the therapeutic outcome and prognosis of intracranial ependymoma by reviewing the medical records of 49 patients who were surgically treated in our hospital between 2001 and 2014. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify prognostic variables relative to patient and tumor characteristics, and treatment modalities. All 49 patients (24 men and 25 women; mean age 27.6 years) underwent surgical resection, of whom 14 patients also underwent postoperative radiotherapy. Local recurrence was found in 15 (48.8 %) patients, and 22 (51.2 %) patients died during the follow-up periods. The 5-year recurrence rate was 65 % and the survival rate was 51 %. The results of statistical analysis suggested that preoperative extraventricular drainage and surgical resection extent were prognostic factors related to progression-free survival, and that age, surgical resection extent and histological grade were closely associated with survival. Interestingly, there was a significant correlation between the symptom of hydrocephalus and age (P = 0.010), and patients with a better clinical status (KPS ≥ 80) were significantly associated with a lower WHO grade (P = 0.007). In conclusion, we confirmed that surgical resection extent was the major independent factor affecting both recurrence and survival of patients with intracranial ependymoma, while age and WHO grade were prognostic factors affecting survival but not recurrence.

The role of clinical factors and immunocheckpoint molecules in the prognosis of patients with supratentorial extraventricular ependymoma: a single-center retrospective study

“…The reported prognostic factors of ependymoma include age, tumor location, histological grade, the extent of resection (EOR), metastatic spread, Ki-67 status, and adjuvant radiotherapy (Metellus et al 2007;Kuncova et al 2009;Merchant et al 2009;Pejavar et al 2011;Tarapore et al 2013;Sayegh et al 2014). EOR is the most essential prognostic factor for ependymoma (Venkatramani et al 2013;Lin and Chintagumpala 2015;Ye et al 2015;Ramaswamy and Taylor 2016;Sato et al 2017;Jung et al 2018;Svoboda et al 2018). The Ki-67 protein is a biomarker for Liguo Wang and Song Han contributed equally to this work.…”