SHORT ILLUSTRATED REVIEW Cerebellar glioblastomas: pathophysiology, clinical presentation and management Gordan Grahovac & Damir Tomac & Smiljka Lambasa & Arijana Zoric & Mario Habek Received: 6 April 2008 / Accepted: 28 October 2008 / Published online: 25 March 2009 # Springer-Verlag 2009 Summary Glioblastoma multiforme usually affects the cerebral hemispheres with the peak age of onset in the sixth or seventh decade, while cerebellar glioblastoma multiforme is a rare tumour especially in younger patients. Most result from de-differentiation from low grade astro- cytoma (secondary glioblastoma) or can develop de novo (primary glioblastoma). Primary glioblastomas develop in older patients while secondary glioblastomas develop in younger patients and contain TP53 mutations as the earliest detectable change. We report a 28 year old patient with primary multi-focal cerebellar glioblastoma multiforme and review the pathophisiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment of cerebellar glioblastomas. Keywords Glioblastoma multiforme . Cerebellum . Primary glioblastoma . p53 . p73 Introduction Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common primary brain tumour in adults. It usually affects the cerebral hemispheres and the peak age of onset is the sixth or seventh decade [4]. Few examples of cerebellar glioblasto- ma in adults have been published so far [5, 12]. The aim of this report is to give an overview of pathophysiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment of cerebellar glioblastomas, together with an illustrative clinical example which highlights all the diagnostic problems. Literature review All articles containing the search term “Glioblastoma” and “Cerebellum” from 1975–2008 were obtained from the Medline database (PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ PubMed/, accessed on March 29, 2008). This approach yielded 163 titles and the abstracts of those related to cerebellar glioblastoma were read. Only articles in English were reviewed in detail. References were also selected from the authors' files. On the basis of abstract content, relevant papers were read specifically to provide context for this review rather than to comprehensively catalogue all publications. This review summarises the pathophisiology, clinical presentation, diag- nosis and treatment of cerebellar glioblastomas. Acta Neurochir (2009) 151:653–657 DOI 10.1007/s00701-009-0286-5 Study concept and design: Grahovac and Habek. Acquisition of data: Grahovac, Tomac, Lambasa and Zoric. Analysis and interpretation of data: Grahovac, Tomac, Lambasa and Zoric. Drafting of the manuscript: Grahovac and Habek. Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Grahovac, Tomac, Lambasa, Zoric and Habek. Administrative, technical, and material support: Grahovac and Habek. G. Grahovac (*) : D. Tomac Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Dubrava, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: ggrahov@mef.hr S. Lambasa Department of Pathology, University Hospital Dubrava, Zagreb, Croatia A. Zoric Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Division of Molecular Medicine, Ruder Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia M. Habek University Department of Neurology, Zagreb School of Medicine and University Hospital Center, Zagreb, Croatia