Abstracto

Intracranial perineural spread from presumably regressed squamous cell carcinomas.

Bart K Chwalisz, Konstantinos AA Douglas, Vivian Paraskevi Douglas, Joseph F RizzoFrederick A Jakobiec, Paula Cortes arrantes, Michael K Yoon, Otto Rapalino

Most cases of intracranial Squamous Cell Carcinomas (SCC) result from either metastatic or perineural spread from sinus or other primary head and neck malignancies and Primary Intracranial Squamous Cell Carcinoma (PISCC) occurs very rarely. We present two cases of female patients who were both diagnosed with an intracranial SCC of unknown origin. In both cases, the patients presented with cranial nerve findings and radiological evidence of involvement of the cavernous sinus and adjacent cranial nerves. SCC was confirmed by biopsy and a detailed analysis of pathological and immunohistochemical findings was consistent with perineural spread of a presumed cutaneous SCC despite no visible skin lesion, leading to the conclusion of a regressed superficial epithelial primary tumor. We propose that the explanation that best fits the clinical data of both cases is a vanishing malignant epithelial tumor. We believe that this is the first report of perineural spread of SCC with disappearance of two malignant squamous primary tumors.