Pleural Effusion: A Rare Presentation of Mature Teratoma in a Young Patient

Abstract

Iqbal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Mediastinal Mature Cystic Teratoma With Intrapulmonary Extension Mimicking a Hydatid Cyst: Advantages of MRI in Diagnostics

“…Patients with teratomas are frequently asymptomatic for a long time, and the tumor is found incidentally on chest X-ray. Most of the symptoms are related to compression of adjacent structures and include chest pain, dyspnea, cough, fever, and fatigue [ 1 , 5 , 6 ]. Other symptoms can be presented in the event of rupture, which is a rare but potentially serious complication.…”

“…A chest X-ray is usually the initial investigation, which often reveals an anterior mediastinal mass [ 1 ]. In our case, an initial chest X-ray was performed to exclude other possible causes of acute chest pain, revealing a large mass in the left hilar region.…”

“…The differential diagnosis of a mediastinal cystic mass in the anterior mediastinum is extensive, and often several entities must be considered, such as thymomas, lymphomas, lymphangiomas, hydatid cyst, and other non-neoplastic cystic lesions, a mediastinal or lung abscesses, and of course teratoma (as in our case) or other germ-cell tumors [ 1 , 8 , 13 ].…”

“…However, several specific findings help us distinguish them on imaging modalities, including the location and MRI appearance, as we will discuss later in this article. Since teratomas have unpredictable natural progression and potentially life-threatening complications, complete surgical resection is the primary treatment of choice [ 1 ].…”

“…Mature cystic teratomas are rare germ-cell tumors that primarily originate in the gonads. The anterior mediastinum is the most common extragonadal site of germ cell tumors, accounting for 15% of all mediastinal tumors, of which 50% to 70% are teratomas [1]. At extragonadal sites, most of the teratomas are mature type and benign, but approximately 1-3% of cases may contain immature elements and are either overtly malignant or undergo a malignant transformation [1][2][3].…”