Descriptive epidemiology of primary spinal cord tumors.

There is little population-based data available on primary spinal cord tumors. Many of the existing statistics are not current or were obtained from surgical series. Historically, population-based data were collected only for malignant tumors, and only recently have data begun to be collected on non-malignant tumors. The objective of this study was to estimate the incidence of both non-malignant and malignant primary spinal cord tumors and to estimate the survival rates for primary malignant spinal cord tumors. Incidence of spinal cord tumors was estimated from cases diagnosed between 1998 and 2002 in 16 CBTRUS collaborating state cancer registries. Age-adjusted rates were generated using SAS (8.2) and standardized to the 2000 US standard population. SEER*Stat 6.1.4 software was used to estimate relative survival for malignant spinal cord tumors for cases diagnosed between 1975 and 2002 in nine SEER regions. Of the spinal cord tumors identified (CBTRUS; n = 3,226), 69% were non-malignant. The most common histologic types were meningiomas (29%), nerve sheath tumors (24%), and ependymomas (23%). The overall incidence of spinal cord tumors was 0.74 per 100,000 person-years, with an incidence of 0.77/100,000 in females and 0.70/100,000 in males. The incidence rate was lowest in children (0.26) and peaked in the 75-84 year age group (1.80). Rates were higher in non-Hispanic whites (0.79) than in Hispanics (0.61) or non-Hispanic blacks (0.45). The 1-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates following diagnosis of a primary malignant spinal cord tumor were 85%, 71%, and 64%, respectively (SEER; n = 1,220).