In most cases, skull base osteomyelitis arises from infections of external auditory canal, middle ear or paranasal sinuses. On the other hand, atypical or central skull base osteomyelitis has no evidence of external otitis or other infection sources. It is often found located on clivus and involves lower cranial nerves and brainstem through the foramina of skull base. The overall rate of mortality reaches 10% and long-term neurologic sequelae are seen in additional 31% of cases regardless of aggressive treatment. We recently encountered a 68-year-old man with right facial pain and generalized headache, and we achieved good outcome with the recovery of vocal cord palsy and disappearance of headache by surgical debridement and long-term antibiotics. We report it with a review of literature.
While ancient schwannoma (AS) from the cervical sympathetic chain is very rare. Preoperative Horner's syndrome resulting from cervical sympathetic chain schwannoma (CSCS) is extremely rare. A 58-year-old woman visited our clinic with a huge lateral neck mass that had been present for thirteen years. Ptosis and enophthalmos were observed on the left eye. After radiologic evaluation, we assessed the CSCS by performing surgical excision. Finally, pathologic examination revealed it to be AS. There has been no recurrence for 15 months after discharge, however Horner's syndrome has become more prominent. We report this unique case of ancient schwannoma with literature review.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.