Cellular and reticular variants of haemangioblastoma revisited: a clinicopathologic study of 88 cases

The presence of histological variants of haemangioblastoma is well established, but data on the prognostic implications of histological subtyping are missing. We thus characterized clinical factors associated with histological subtypes, that is, of the cellular and reticular variant of haemangioblastoma, in a series of 88 consecutive primary haemangioblastomas of the central nervous system. Ten haemangioblastomas were classified as ‘cellular’ according to Cushing and Bailey. As compared to the more common ‘reticular’ variant (n = 78), the proportion of tumours containing glial fibrillary acidic protein‐positive tumour cells (80%vs. 7%), as well as median Ki67 (MIB1) proliferation indices [4% (quartiles: 1–8%) vs.