April 1999--44 year old man with a bleeding intracerebral tumor

A 44 year-old man presented with a three month history of increasing headache and evolving left sided hemiparesis that culminated in an haemorrhage into an intracerebral tumour which was partially resected. Histologic, immunohistochemical, electron microscopic and molecular studies are supportive of a diagnosis of primary embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. While primary rhabdomyosarcoma of the central nervous system is rare, and 72% of previously reported cases are in the paediatric population, there appears to be subset of these tumours occurring supratentorially in the adult.