Precocious puberty in a 3-year-old girl associated with a parasellar ganglionic hamartoma

Precocious puberty due to disorders of the nervous system is uncommon and may arise from neoplastic lesions situated in the pineal gland, hypothalamus, tuber cinereum, and midbrain. Most of these neoplasms maintain connections with or are attached to the central nervous system. Rarely, however, tumors lying free within the meninges may be associated with precocious puberty. A patient with this rare form of precocity who was found to have a parasellar ganglionic hamartoma is described in this report. Her post-operative course was marked by a reversal in her sexual precocity and a subsequent arrest in her accelerated growth rate.