Diagnosis and treatment of solitary fibrous tumor/hemangiopericytoma of central nervous system. Retrospective report of 17 patients and literature review.

To investigate the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of solitary fibrous tumor (SFT)/ hemangiopericytoma (HPC) of central nervous system (CNS), we retrospectively reviewed records of 17 patients who were treated for CNS SFT/HPC at the Department of Neurosurgery, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University from December 2010 to June 2016, and reevaluated their pathological diagnoses according to the 2016 WHO classification of CNS tumors. We then analyzed their clinical symptoms, imaging characteristics, treatments and outcomes. Clinical manifestations of CNS SFT/HPC were diverse, but mainly included headache, increased intracranial pressure, seizures, and focal neurological deficits. In MRI, CNS SFT/HPC usually shows heterogeneous signals, and unusual enhancements; we saw lobulated shapes in 13 patients and necrotic or cystic changes in 12 patients. Tumors of all 17 patients were resected surgically; 9 patients also received postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy. Mean follow-up time was 21 months (range: 2-67 months). The 17 surgeries included 11 total resections, 4 subtotal resection, and 2 partial resections. We followed up 12 patients; 9 of the patients who received total resections had no disease progression; among the 6 patients who did not receive total resections, 2 died of tumor recurrence, 1 has not shown any disease progression. Thus, extent of resection has an apparently crucial influence on prognosis. Postoperative radiotherapy should be chosen carefully, based on resection extent and pathologic grade.