1989 Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 384-388
In order to elucidate the cytologic characteristics of brain tumors, nuclear features were analyzed in smears taken from 74 human brain tumors. The materials included 8 astrocytomas, 5 anaplastic astrocytomas, 11 glioblastomas, 3 oligodendrogliomas, 3 ependymomas, 5 medulloblastomas, 6 neurilemmomas, 14 meningiomas, 3 germinomas, 9 pituitary adenomas and 7 metastatic adenocarcinomas from the lung. For comparison, 6 specimens of cerebral white matter taken from autopsy cases without neurological diseases were also investigated.
The mean size of the longest axis of nuclei was less than 9 μ in normal astrocytes and gliomas of low grade malignancy. While in malignant tumors such as glioblastoma, germinoma and metastatic adenocarcinoma, many nuclei were more than 10 μ in diameter and irregular in shape.
The nuclear chromatin patterns were finely granular in primary brain tumors and coarsely granular in metastatic adenocarcinomas.
Cells with larger nucleoli than 2 μ in diameter and cells with more nucleoli than 3 were frequently observed in germinomas, metastatic adenocarcinomas and glioblastomas, while these cells were scarcely observed in other histological types.
