Intraorbital and intracranial soft-tissue glomus tumor in an 8-year-old child
✓ Soft-tissue glomus tumors (or glomangiomas) are unrelated to neuroendocrine paragangliomas (glomus tympanicum, jugulare, and vagale). The authors present the first reported case of an orbital soft-tissue glomus tumor in a child. An 8-year-old girl developed rapidly progressive right-eye blindness, proptosis, and a sixth cranial nerve palsy. Magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated a homogeneously enhancing lesion extending from the right orbit through the superior orbital fissure to the cavernous sinus and middle cranial fossa. A biopsy specimen demonstrated the lesion to be a soft-tissue glomus tumor. Following angiography and embolization, a gross-total resection of the tumor was achieved. The patient was treated with adjuvant proton-beam radiotherapy. At 24 months follow-up her proptosis and sixth cranial nerve palsy had resolved and there was no evidence of tumor recurrence.
Expert’s comment concerning Grand Rounds case entitled ‘‘Intracranial hypotension with a sixth cranial nerve palsy subsequent to massive thoracic CSF hygroma: a rare complication of thoracic disc excision” (by A. Khurana, J. Brousil, A. Russo, A. Evans, N. A. Quraishi, B. M. Boszczyk doi:10.1007/s00586-013-2818-1)
