World Neurosurg
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Review Case Reports
Encasement of the cauda equina after early childhood meningitis: case report and review of the literature.
Arachnopathy following meningitis has been described in the setting of chronic spinal arachnoiditis and more recently as shunt-related progressive myelopathy due to meningeal thickening. ⋯ It is challenging but worthwhile to recognize this separate entity because, in contrast to both shunt-related progressive myelopathy due to meningeal thickening and adhesive arachnoiditis, surgery involving microsurgical dissection of the thick arachnoid encasement of the cauda equina may be curative in medically refractory cases.
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Review Case Reports
Acquired Spinal Arteriovenous Fistula Presenting as Brown Sequard Syndrome and Endovascular Treatment Outcome.
Brown-Séquard syndrome is typically caused by penetrating trauma to the cervical spinal cord; however, other compressive and vascular occlusive etiologies have been previously described. It is extremely uncommon to have a delayed presentation as an extramedullary compressive lesion from the venous varix of an acquired spinal arteriovenous fistula. ⋯ Subsequent treatment occurred with coil embolization with good outcome.
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Review Case Reports
Intracranial Angiomatoid Fibrous Histiocytoma: a Case report and literature review.
Angiomatoid fibrous histiocytoma (AFH) is a rare and low-grade soft tissue lesion that typically arises from subcutaneous and deep dermal tissue of extremities. The first case was reported in 1979 by Enzinger and has since become known as a distinct entity. AFH has been increasingly reported in different organ systems, with rare reports of primary intracranial AFH. To date there have been 3 reports of intracranial AFH and 1 report of metastasis to the brain, most of which were in young adults. ⋯ We present a rare case of intracranial AFH in a patient relatively old for onset of diagnosis. To date, only 3 prior cases of AFH have been reported. The radiographic findings were nonspecific and initially pointed toward a diagnosis of schwannoma, whereas histopathology seemed to initially suggest meningioma. Further pathologic consultation finally confirmed AFH as the diagnosis. We suspect there are more cases of intracranial AFH that are misdiagnosed due to variability of findings on pathology. The behavior of this tumor remains in question as 1 of the 3 reported cases demonstrated significant recurrence. As such, gross total resection of this lesion is preferable.
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Intrameatal cochleovestibular neurovascular conflict is a rare condition with specific clinical and therapeutic implications. Although surgery is commonly indicated in other neurovascular conflicts, for this subset of patients there is little evidence to guide treatment decisions. Moving from a case description, we performed a review of the literature on this topic to systematically present the best available evidence to guide clinical decisions. ⋯ Surgical treatment offers the best results for tinnitus and vertigo, but it seems to have no effect on hearing loss, not even at long-term follow-up. Microvascular decompression should be proposed to intrameatal symptomatic patients before the onset of hearing loss.
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Nonpenetrating titanium clips create no suture holes and thereby reduce cerebrospinal fluid leakage after dural closure. However, no data exist regarding metallic artifacts caused by these clips during postoperative neuroimaging. We aimed to evaluate clip-related artifacts on postoperative magnetic resonance (MR) images of 17 patients who underwent spinal surgery. ⋯ Metallic artifacts caused by nonpenetrating titanium clips were 200% larger than the actual clip but did not affect spinal cord and extradural tissue visualization. The use of these clips for closing the spinal dura mater does not alter postoperative radiologic evaluation quality.