Childhood Ependymoma Treatment (PDQ®)–Health Professional Version

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Changes to This Summary (08/12/2016)

The PDQ cancer information summaries are reviewed regularly and updated as new information becomes available. This section describes the latest changes made to this summary as of the date above.

This summary was comprehensively reviewed.

General Information About Childhood Ependymoma

Updated text to reflect the 2016 revision to the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) for ependymal tumors (cited Louis et al. as reference 1).

Added Molecular Features as a new subsection.

Histopathologic Classification of Childhood Ependymal Tumors

Updated text to reflect the 2016 revision to the WHO Classification of Tumors of the CNS for ependymal tumors (cited Louis et al. as reference 1).

Treatment of Newly Diagnosed Childhood Ependymoma, Anaplastic Ependymoma, or RELA Fusion–Positive Ependymoma

Added text to state that retrospective analysis of the outcome for patients with posterior fossa ependymoma (EPN-PFB) suggests that these patients might be sufficiently treated by gross-total resection alone, but this approach has not been tested in a prospective, randomized clinical trial (cited Ramaswamy et al. as reference 7).

Revised text to state that the traditional postsurgical treatment for these patients has been radiation therapy consisting of 54 Gy to 59.4 Gy to the tumor bed for children aged 3 years and older.

Added text to state that concerns of brain stem toxicity in very young children after proton therapy to the posterior fossa have prompted the use of more conservative doses in these children (cited Indelicato et al. as reference 20).

This summary is written and maintained by the PDQ Pediatric Treatment Editorial Board, which is editorially independent of NCI. The summary reflects an independent review of the literature and does not represent a policy statement of NCI or NIH. More information about summary policies and the role of the PDQ Editorial Boards in maintaining the PDQ summaries can be found on the About This PDQ Summary and PDQ® - NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Database pages.

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