Brain tumor survival: Results from the National Cancer Data Base

Hospital-based data reported to the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) were a vailable for over 60,000 patients with a primary brain tumor diagnosed from 1985-1988 and 1990-1992. The most common histologies were glioblastomas, a strocytomas and meningiomas. Five-year survival rates for these tumors were 2%, 30% and 70% respectively. Histology, age at diagnosis,behavior, and lo cation were important variables in estimating survival. Comparisons with po pulation-based registry data suggest that the malignant tumors are well rep resented in NCDB, but the benign histologies are under-reported. Survival e stimates for the malignant tumors are comparable to previously reported stu dies. The NCDB provides recent information on brain tumor distribution and survival patterns not available in other large databases.