[Spontaneous rhinorrhea of unusual etiology]

Authors report on the case of one patient exhibiting, since three months, a spontaneous thinorrhea and directed to them with the diagnosis of pituitary tumor. The neuro-roentgenologic inquiry discovers a ventricular dilatation and an evagination of the III rd. ventricle into the pituitary fossa ; it also puts in evidence a tumor of the posterior cerebral fossa. We are dealing here with a meningioma of the posterior aspect of temporal pyramid (petrosal bone). If tumoral hydrocephalus is common, its complication with a spontaneous rhinorrhea is, on the contrary, exceptional. We are therefore obliged to consider the pre-existing in this female patient of a deficiency of the pituitary diaphragm that has favoured the intra-sellar diverticle of the III rd ventricle, in the same manner as it makes possible, in other circumstances the arachnoidocele in the syndrome of empty pituitary fossa. Exeresis of the tumor, by suppressing the intracranial hypertension, stopped the rhinorrhea and has considerably improved the visual signs.