Multicentric glioma or metastatic disease: a problem in diagnosis

The case of a 56-year-old woman with a breast mass and two separate, intracerebral lesions demonstrated by computerized axial tomography of the brain is reported. Evaluation revealed no primary neoplasm, and a diagnosis of multicentric glioma was made and confirmed by postmortem examination. This entity, known to neurospecialists, has had no previous exposure in the literature dealing with general medicine. This patient demonstrates a possible diagnostic pitfall which may arise in this age of readily available computerized axial tomography.