Although primary central nervous system tumors are uncommon, accounting for <3% of all neoplasms, they pose substantial decision-making and management challenges because of their rather unique anatomic, physiologic, pharmacologic, immunologic, and functional challenges. The impact of the tumor and the requisite treatment on overall functional outcomes surpasses that of many other malignancies due to the relatively younger age of onset for several of these tumors, as well as the extremes of significant survival; albeit, at the cost of survivorship decrement for a number of patients, and at the other extreme, near-universal lethality following rapid progression for another subset of patients.
