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Endoscopic Endonasal Trans-sphenoidal Approach: Minimally Invasive Surgery for Pituitary Adenomas
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Published on: January 17, 2018

December 1998--16 year old female with headaches, lethargy and a sellar/suprasellar mass

T J Cummings1, C T Chu, C M Hulette

  • 1Department of Pathology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA.

Brain Pathology (Zurich, Switzerland)
|April 29, 1999
PubMed

A 16 year female with a history of developmental delay and shunted hydrocephalus presented with two months of progressive headaches, lethargy and visual disturbances. An MRI of the brain revealed a sellar and suprasellar cystic mass which was absent on a previous MRI six years earlier. The pre-operative clinical diagnosis was pituitary adenoma vs. craniopharyngioma. Histologically, the fibrous wall of the ciliated epithelial-lined cyst was thickened by non-caseating granulomatous inflammation, hemorrhage, hemosiderin, and cholesterol clefts, consistent with cyst rupture. Rathke's cleft cysts are uncommon symptomatic lesions in young people, and must be distinguished from craniopharyngioma.

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