An incidental finding of a pleural based schwannoma

A man in his 40s was incidentally found to have a large right sided apical pleural based mass on imaging. This was further investigated with a CT-guided biopsy. Histological and immunohistochemical analysis of the tissue revealed a diagnosis of a Schwannoma: a rare, slow-growing benign nerve sheath tumour. Only a handful of pleural based Schwannomas have been documented in the literature. They account for about 0.2% of lung tumours. The patient was referred to cardiothoracic surgery who advised surgical resection of the mass, which he is awaiting. Here, we report a rare case of a pleural based Schwannoma which was diagnosed incidentally on chest x-ray.