Epidemiology and demographic risk factors of brain tumors in mashhad, iran during 1988-2013

Brain tumors are considered to be the most common solid tumor in children. Moreover, it is thought to be one of the main causes of death among them. As a result, studying its epidemiology andinvestigating environmental factors affecting its incidence seems to be of high importance. The aim of this study is to determine the epidemiology of brain tumors focusing on sex ratio and mean age ofpatients referred to oncology center during three periods from 1988 to 2013 in the north of Iran. This cross-sectional study was conducted in Mashhad, northeast of Iran. Data were obtained from historyrecords of 685 patients who were referred to oncology clinic which was the first private oncology center in this region from 1988 to 2013. The collected data included age, sex, occupational status, residency, year of admission, location of tumor in the brain, and histopathology type of brain cancer. In order to evaluate the epidemiological progression trends, this study was divided into 3 periods of timeas note: 1988-1992, 1992-2002, and 2002-2013. All data were analyzed by SPSS software vs. 16 using the statistical chi-square and two independent sample T test for two groups’ comparison, and ANOVAfor more groups. p<0.05 was used as the criterion of statistical significance. Totally 683 cases were analyzed. The mean age was 38.54±18.94 years (male: 38.65 female: 38.34). 436 of them were male(63.8%) and 247 were female (36.2%). Sex ratio was 1.77 in this study. Comparing the three periods of time, age showed a significant difference (p<0.001) in fact, the mean age has been increased from 32.4 to 41.7 years old. However, there was no significant difference between sex distribution in the named groups (p=0.27). All cases were divided into glial (500) and non-glial (125) groups. No significantdifferences was observed between sex in glial and non-glial cases (p=0.45). Therefore, there were significant differences between age in glial and non-glial patients which the mean ages of them were 41.89 and 24.83 years old respectively (p=0.0). Pathologically, the most common brain tumor is astrocytoma in glial and medulloblastoma in non-glial group. Considering occupation, housekeeping (28.9%) and student (40.4%) had the most prevalence in glial and non-glial tumors, respectively. Furthermore, location of non-glial tumors is mostly in the cerebellum (15.0%), whereas glial tumors are predominantly located in the frontal lobe (19.7%).

Keywords:

Cervical Cancer , Cervical Cancer , Lifestyle and Cancer , Nutrition and Cancer , Solid Tumors