Cerebral tuberculosis with expansion into brainstem tuberculoma

Abstract

There are only scattered case reports of intracranial tuberculosis in industrialized nations; brainstem tuberculoma is even more unusual, accounting for 2.5% to 8% of all intracranial tuberculoma. In developing nations, however, central nervous system tuberculosis (CNS-TB) is not rare and intracranial tuberculoma may account for 5% to 30% of all intracranial masses. The authors present two cases of CNS-TB with expansion to brainstem tuberculoma in patients who were undergoing treatment and had no known prior exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis.