HEMORRHAGE INTO MENINGIOMAS

FOR many years, it was widely held that brain tumors not uncommonly presented acutely as a result of hemorrhage into the tumor. The 1930 edition of Osler's textbook of medicine contains the statement that gliomas of the brain, "are usually very vascular and the vessels are very liable to degenerate with resulting hemorrhage, thrombosis and edema. This often accounts for acute features appearing suddenly."1Over the years a sufficient body of information has accumulated which rather demolishes this view. Oldberg2in 1933 was among the first to correct this misapprehension. He reviewed Cushings series of 832 gliomas and found 31 instances of gross hemorrhage for a ratio of 1:27 or 3.7%. Various other series have corroborated this intelligence,3-6in studies primarily concerned with the etiology of massive intracerebral hemorrhage per se; other studies are devoted to the incidence of intracerebral hemorrhage secondary to tumor.7,8 As