[A case of foreign-body granuloma treated with steroid hormone]

A 68-year-old woman was admitted to Nagasaki University Hospital complaining of gait disturbance. She had suffered from hemifacial spasm since the age of 56 and had undergone neurovascular decompression for the spasm in another hospital five years before admission. At surgery, the vertebral and posterior inferior cerebellar arteries had been separated from the facial nerve with cotton string and attached to the clivus with alpha-cyanoacrylate monomer. Although the hemifacial spasm had improved postoperatively, the patient had suffered from gait disturbance and headache for two months after surgery, and hearing disturbance and hemifacial palsy on the same side as the hemifacial spasm for seven months after surgery. At the time of the present admission, contrast-enhanced CT scan revealed a mass at the left cerebello-pontine angle. In the T1-weighted inversion recovery sequence of MRI, the mass showed a slightly lower intensity than that of surrounding tissues. In the T2-weighted spin echo sequence of MRI, it showed a heterogenously low intensity with some high intensity spots. We diagnosed this mass as a foreign-body granuloma and treated it with dexamethasone injected intramuscularly. Edema decreased around the granuloma, and her gait disturbance improved markedly. But the hearing disturbance and hemifacial palsy did not improve at all, indicating that these two symptoms might not be caused only by brain edema but also by direct damage due to granuloma or inflammation. We thought that the steroid hormone elicited good results in the treatment of inoperable foreign-body granuloma.