A simplified overview of World Health Organization classification update of central nervous system tumors 2016

Anshu Gupta, Tanima Dwivedi

Journal of Neurosciences in Rural Practice 2017 8(4):629-641

After 8 years, an update of central nervous system (CNS) tumors was published in 2016 after 2007. First time ever, molecular markers along with histology have been used in classification of any tumor. Major changes are seen in glioma and medulloblastoma groups. Few entities have been added such as diffuse midline glioma, H3 K27M-mutant, RELA fusion-positive ependymoma, embryonal tumor with multilayered rosettes, C19MC-altered, and hybrid nerve sheath tumors. Few variants and patterns that no longer have diagnostic and/or biological relevance and have been deleted such as glioblastoma cerebri, protoplasmic and fibrillary astrocytoma, and cellular ependymoma. Other changes include deletion of term "primitive neuroectodermal tumor," addition of criterion of brain invasion in atypical meningioma, separation of melanotic schwannoma from other schwannoma, and combination of solitary fibrous tumors and hemangiopericytoma as one entity. There is also expansion of entities in nerve sheath tumors and hematopoietic/lymphoid tumors of the CNS. In this review article, we tried to review CNS tumors 2016 classification update in a simplified manner; comparing the differences between 2016 and 2007 CNS tumors classifications with brief description of important molecular markers and finally utility as well as challenges of this classification.

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