Benign cysts of the Brain Simulating Brain Tumor

Ependymal lined paraventricular cerebral cysts; a report of three cases

“…Benign intracerebral cysts have been described in previous papers; the majority of the cysts were considered to be examples of porencephaly (Pendergrass and Perryman, 1946;Drew and Grant, 1948) with a much smaller number either not thought to be porencephalic (Handa and Bucy, 1956) or not classified (Miller, 1952). These reports were mainly concerned with diagnosis and treatment; little attention was paid to the actual structure of the cysts and the histological appearances were not described.…”

“…The intermittent nature of the symptoms and the lengthy history may indeed suggest the presence of cerebrovascular disease in the middleaged subject. When evidence of raised intracranial pressure is found and a space-occupying lesion detected by special techniques, a diagnosis of neoplasm will almost certainly be made unless the cyst is entered accidentally during ventriculography (Handa and Bucy 1956). A firm diagnosis can be made only at operation with the help of histological examination of the cyst wall.…”

Ventral brain-stem compression from a subarachnoid ependymal cyst

“…Epithelial cysts of proposed neuroectodermal origin have been described over the cerebral convexities [1,15,17,19,23], in the sylvian fissure [20,25], in the chiasmatic and interpeduncular cisterns [10], at the quadrigeminal plate [8], over the cerebellar vermis [9], in the cerebellopontine angle [13], and in the interhemispheric fissure [4]. Epithelial cysts located anterior to the brain stem have been described, but these were demonstrated, on the basis of morphology, to be lined with respiratory epithelium [11,24].…”

Choroidal Epithelial Cyst in the Cerebellopontine Angle associated with Trigeminal Neuralgia

“…6,8,9,13,16) We speculate that in our patient fluid accumulation oc curred through osmotic transport, because of the absence of goblet cells, the presence of thin, loose connective tissue, and the negative results of PAS and mucicarmine staining, which suggested a lack of mucin production. The protein concentration of the fluid varied among the cases reported, ranging from 11 mg/dl to 85 gm/dl.6°18) Our patient's cyst fluid con tained 100 mg/dl protein, and could not be distin guished from cerebrospinal fluid on CT scans.…”