A Retrospective Analysis of Intracranial Meningiomas in a Tertiary Health Care Facility in North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction/Aim: There is scanty detailed published literature on meningiomas in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. This study is aimed at exploring the demographics, histopathology and presenting symptoms/signs of meningioma in our tertiary health facility and comparing it with other published literature. Methodology: This is a hospital based retrospective study of all histopathologically diagnosed meningioma cases at the department of histopathology of the Jos University Teaching Hospital in plateau state North-Central Nigeria. The period of review is between the 1st of January 2012 to the 31st of December 2020. Materials utilized for this research consisted of Archival histopathology glass slides, paraffin wax tissue blocks, electronic surgical pathology result data base, electronic cancer registry entries and hard copies of patient case files. The age, sex, intracranial location, histomorphological variant, grade and presenting symptom/sign was documented for all cases and analyzed. Results: Thirty-four (34) cases of meningioma out of 87 primary intracranial neoplasms were histopathologically diagnosed over the 9 years of review. There was a female predominance, with a M:F of 1:1.61. The peak age of diagnoses occurred in the 5th and 6th decades for females and males respectively. The commonest histomorphological variant was the Meningothelial type with the commonest intracranial site of diagnosis being the convexities. The most frequently occurring presenting symptom/sign were headache, seizures and visual impairment. Conclusion: Meningioma is the commonest intracranial tumour diagnosed at the Jos University teaching Hospital, In North central Nigeria. This tumour occurs at a relatively younger age in our environment. The sex distribution, variants, grades and symptoms/signs of this tumour in our study conforms to what is obtainable in other parts of the world.