This study aims to investigate causes of death (CODs) in patients diagnosed with non-malignant meningioma arising from the meninges.

Non-malignant meningioma (NM) is the most common brain tumor in the US, where it accounts for 38% of cases, and it’s also among the most common brain tumors worldwide. In 2004, all US cancer registrars began including non-malignant brain tumors, but despite this, our understanding of CODs in NM remains limited.

We followed up 116,430 patients diagnosed with NM in the US between 2004 and 2018 using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. We calculated the proportions of death brought about by each cause and assessed risks of death using standardized mortality ratios (SMRs).

The majority of patients were female (73.8%), white (79.5%), and aged ≥ 60 years (63.6%). Tumor locations were the following: cerebral meninges (85.3%), spinal meninges (4.1%), and meninges, "not otherwise specified" (NOS) (10.6%). We observed a total of 31,640 deaths. Cancer accounted for 27.4% of total deaths (SMR: 2.51) and heart disease accounted for 18.7% (SMR: 1.34), while in-situ and benign neoplasms caused only 8.7% (SMR: 26.13). Other significant CODs included the following: Alzheimer’s disease (4.5% of deaths, SMR: 1.48), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and allied conditions (3.8% of deaths, SMR: 1.13), diabetes mellitus (2.6% of deaths, SMR: 1.70), and pneumonia and influenza (2.1% of deaths, SMR: 1.58).