Heterotopic neuroglial tissue: two cases involving the tongue and the buccal region

Glial choristoma of the tongue. Clinicopathological analysis of a case and pathogenetic insights

“…Glial choristoma, which is a choristoma composed by glial cells either in association or not with other normal brain tissue elements, is more commonly restricted to the craniofacial region where the tongue is rarely involved [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]. Even though different terms have been used to define the lesion, including glioma [3,4,16], glial/gliomatous teratoma [5,10], heterotopic brain, or neural/glial/neuroglial tissue [6,7,8,9,11,24,28], the term glial choristoma is more appropriate because the lesion is a developmental anomaly and not a neoplasm and produces a tumour-like tissue mass [1,2]. Surgical excision with free margins is curative and, because the lesion may be only suspected at clinical examination, histology and immunohistochemistry are mandatory for the definitive diagnosis [13,15,…”

“…Even though different terms have been used to define the lesion, including glioma [3,4,16], glial/gliomatous teratoma [5,10], heterotopic brain, or neural/glial/neuroglial tissue [6,7,8,9,11,24,28], the term glial choristoma is more appropriate because the lesion is a developmental anomaly and not a neoplasm and produces a tumour-like tissue mass [1,2]. Surgical excision with free margins is curative and, because the lesion may be only suspected at clinical examination, histology and immunohistochemistry are mandatory for the definitive diagnosis [13,15,17,18,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30].…”

Selective Pathologies of the Head and Neck in Children

“…Glial tissue can be part of teratomas and careful sectioning and examination should be performed to exclude this possibility. In addition to the nasal glial heterotopias, glial and neuroglial heterotopias have been described in a variety of locations throughout the head and neck region including scalp, 69 oral cavity and tongue, 70 hard palate, 71 lateral neck, 72 orbit, 73 middle ear, [74][75][76] and lateral face. 77 Interestingly, middle ear neuroglial heterotopias in most cases come to attention as adults.…”

“…Neuroglial and osseous choristomas have been described in the tongue and can rarely become infected. 70,116,117 A lingual choristoma is shown in Figure 5. Salivary gland choristomas are uncommon and have been described in the middle ear, neck, and cervical lymph nodes.…”

Congenital Neuroglial Heterotopia in a Neonatal Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina richardsi ) with Evidence of Recent Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

“…This lesion typically occurs as a firm-to-cystic, solitary, space-occupying mass and may contain cerebrospinal fluid, presumably from autogenous production by choroid plexus tissue (Hendrickson et al, 1990). In humans, congenital extracranial heterotopic neuroglial tissue occurs most commonly in the sinonasal region on midline due to anatomic proximity to the central nervous system (Aanaes et al, 2008), but has also been associated with the nasopharynx (AlAmmar et al, 2006), hard and soft palate (Al-Nafussi et al, 1990;Ide et al, 1997;Anjaneyulu and Deka, 2004), tongue (Fan et al, 2008), lip (Pasyk et al, 1988), buccal region (Aanaes et al, 2008), middle ear (Gyure et al, 2000), face and neck (Hendrickson et al, 1990), chest wall (Shepherd et al, 1987), scalp (McDermott et al, 1996), and lung (Morgan et al, 2003). All existing reports describe a single mass, rather than a cluster of soft tissue masses; however, one facial tumor exhibited fibrous adherence to the periosteum of the facial bones, similar to this harbor seal (Hendrickson et al, 1990).…”