Neurooncology has become a science of such great proportions and
indefinite limits as to include branches which widely diverge from one
another. Therefore, it is not an easy task to fit it all into the narrow
framework of a book, though the collaboration among scientists
compensates partly for the varying depths of knowledge and ex- perience
in the individual disciplines. The principal characteristic of this
work, how- ever, is in casting "pathology" as the common nosographic
link. Though scientific progress has brought us well past the nosography
of brain tu- of departure, the area of mutual understanding to mors,
pathology remains the point which all students of neurooncology refer
when laying out diagnostic, therapeutic, and research schedules.
Neurologists, neurosurgeons, and neuroradiologists orient themselves
only by referring to tumor types. Neurooncology treatises require ever
greater numbers of authors in order to cover the different subject areas
with uniform authority. Excellent texts are available today for this
purpose. The present book is not, and does not wish to be, a treatise
but rather aims at presenting different aspects of neurooncology from
the perspective of pathology and its biological and clinical correlates.
It expresses the author's experi- ence in the study of brain tumors and
their pathology and clinical characteristics. The emphasis dedicated to
the subjects relates to the clinicopathological and theore- tical
importance.