Abstract: Objective To investigate the clinical characteristics of central nervous system tumors in elderly patients.Methods The 556 cases of elderly patients with intracranial and intraspinal neoplasms from 2002.6 to 2005.5 were retrospectively analyzed.Results Tumors of the central nervous system in the aging patients accounted for 9.03% of the total in our unit during the same period.There were 490 cases of intracranial tumors,among which the supratentorial tumors were 388 cases,infratentorial tumors were 90 and the tumors involving both supratentorial and infratentorial were 12 cases.there were 66 cases of intraspinal neoplasms.Meanwhile the most common tumors in our group were meningioma(254 cases),followed by pituitary adenoma(90 cases) and tumors of neuroepithelial tissue(89 cases).After operation 491(88.31%) cases recovered very well,42(7.55%) cases and 23(4.14%) cases were died or almost dead.Conclusion The prevacence rate of central nervous system tumors in elderly patients appeared a tendency of increasing.The incidence of supratentorial tumors was much higher than that of infratentorial tumors.Meningomas was the most common type.The surgery treatment is optimism for the tumor,the age was not a ban for the operation.

Key words: central nervous system tumor, elderly