Multiple head and neck tumors following treatment for craniopharyngioma

To report a unique case of a patient with multiple head and neck tumors following treatment for craniopharyngioma. Retrospective review of the medical record. There is an association between radiation treatment for primary intracranial malignancies and the subsequent development of other intracranial tumors. At the same time, reports regarding the association between thyroid cancer and radiation exposure are abundant within the literature. We present a unique case of a young female who underwent resection and radiation treatment for a craniopharyngioma in 1988. With the exception of bitemporal visual loss and panhypopituitarism requiring hormone replacement therapy, the patient had a relatively uneventful course until 2005. At that time, she developed hearing loss and incapacitating vertigo, which was ultimately attributed to a temporal bone Langerhans histiocytosis. A year and a half later, she was noted to have a thyroid nodule, the pathology of which revealed papillary carcinoma. Seven months after that, she developed new auditory and vestibular symptoms attributable to an acoustic neuroma. This case is remarkable because neither Langerhans histiocytosis following radiation of a craniopharyngioma nor this distinctive combination of head and neck tumors in general have ever been previously reported.