Brain Tumors Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Brain Tumors, including details on symptoms, benign and malignant tumors, gliomas, screening, treatment.

Metastases to the pineal gland.

Lassman AB, Bruce JN, Fetell MR

Department of Neurology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10021, USA. lassmana@mskcc.org

We identified 10 patients with symptomatic metastases to the pineal gland. We present the clinical and radiographic findings in this syndrome. Leptomeningeal metastases occur frequently and are a poor prognostic factor. In all cases, the primary cancer was clinically silent, either in remission (six cases) or previously undiagnosed (four cases). Hence, metastatic disease, albeit uncommon, should be considered in the differential diagnosis of pineal tumors.

Published 10 October 2006 in Neurology, 67(7): 1303-4.
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