Abstract:
OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the etiology of gliomas and determine the utility of the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of central nervous system tumors. METHODS Patients aged ≥18 years who underwent surgery or were followed up for glial tumors between January 2017 and January 2020 and whose pathology reports indicated grade II-IV gliomas were included in the study. Patients with missing data, pathology results incompatible with grade II-IV gliomas, and unavail-able standard molecular/genetic tumor profiles were excluded from the study. RESULTS The results of the standard histopathological and molecular/genetic analyses were evaluated retrospectively without any additional examinations. Data from 259 patients were evaluated. Of these, 8 patients who did not meet the criteria for glioma pathology and 27 patients with not otherwise specified molecular pathological examination results were excluded from the study. Patients were evaluated in detail re-garding demographic and admission data, pathology analysis, potential risk factors, and survival results. CONCLUSION Many factors, particularly high blood glucose levels, sedentary lifestyle, and radiofrequency elec-tromagnetic field exposure, appear to have a relationship with glioma etiology. There is a major het-erogeneity and lack of standardized efficient laboratory procedures that may interfere with reliable standard molecular results. “False positive” molecular markers consist a major classification issue and methods that reflect the requirements of the WHO classification may themselves be inadequate to es-tablish a profile with adequate sensitivity. The development of more practical and accessible methods in addition to standardized, rapid, and reliable methods for testing multiple markers at an acceptable cost is urgently needed. © 2022, Turkish Society for Radiation Oncology.