Ancient Schwannoma of the Cauda Equina: Our Experience and Review of the Literature.

Venceslao Wierzbicki,Alessandro Frati,Alessandro Pesce,Emanuele Piccione,Riccardo Caruso,Luigi Marrocco

doi:10.1155/2016/7930521

Abstract

Ancient schwannomas (AS) are exceedingly rare variant of common schwannomas (CS). Only two cases involving the cauda equina region have been previously reported in literature. AS are typically associated with a higher histological degree of degenerative changes (Antoni B areas). It is of peculiar importance, according to our opinion, to outline that, because of their extremely slow growth (which explains the increase of the degenerative changes in respect to the CS) and their typical soft consistency in respect to their standard counterparts, AS usually imply an even better prognosis.

Highlights

To the best of our knowledge, there are only 2 cases previously reported of Ancient schwannomas (AS) involving cauda equina [1, 2], an exceedingly rare schwannoma subtype for an extremely uncommon location
Ancient schwannoma is a rare variant of schwannoma (
Another case of AS was reported by Hayashi et al [9] that was located at the epiconus-conus medullaris, but it was purely intramedullary and quite different for what concerns both clinical presentation and surgical implications

Summary

Introduction

To the best of our knowledge, there are only 2 cases previously reported of AS involving cauda equina [1, 2], an exceedingly rare schwannoma subtype for an extremely uncommon location. Reported to affect head and neck, cervical region, limbs, pelvis, and retroperitoneum [1,2,3,4,5], it is uncommon is the spinal cord [6,7,8,9,10] but cauda equina involvement is exceptional. The authors report a case of AS involving cauda equina, an exceptionally rare lesion for an extremely rare location, and review all the relevant literature in order to outline clinical, radiological, and pathological remarks of this rare condition

Case Presentation

Findings

Discussion

Conclusions