Metastatic brain tumor. A clinical and pathologic analysis of 101 cases with biopsy.

A clinical and pathologic analysis was made of 101 patients with surgically treated metastatic brain tumors. The most common primary site was the lung (58.4%), followed by th breast (11.9%), gastrointestinal tract (6.9%), and uterus (5.)%). In 14 patients, the disease began with cerebral symptoms. The overall average survival after craniotomy was 8.0 months, the longest survival being 8l/2 years; patients with one-year survivals composed 18.8% of the cases. The histologic features were almost the same in primary and metastatic tumors. The undifferentiated tumor metastasized most frequently to the brain, and adenocarcinoma of the papillary type also seemed to find the brain fertile ground for metastatic growth.