Tumors: Approach and Removal

Abstract

The younger the child the more true the maxim “ skull tumors may not be classified anatomically as outer table, diploic, or inner table, since the thickness of the skull is such that all three tables are invariably involved.” The pediatric neurosurgeon never sees patients with skull metastases; the meningioma is not a tumor of the newborn, infant, or toddler, though it may occur in a juvenile with von Recklinghausen’s disease; dural chondroma has not been reported in childhood; the osteoma rarely grows from the inner table of the skull into the intracranial compartment, almost invariably expands from the outer table of the skull as a relatively smooth, broad-based, bony-hard excresence and is a clinical oddity in childhood.