[Ishikawa's classification of cavernous sinus lesions by clinico-anatomical findings]

Jefferson's classification (1938) has been used to localize lesions of the cavernous sinus. However, we think this classification is sometimes incorrect in identifying localization based on clinico-anatomical evidence. We investigated the efficacy of the newly proposed Ishikawa's classification. Based on the analysis on serial sections of human cavernous sinus, it classifies the locus of the lesion into three groups: anterior, middle, and posterior, corresponding to the location of the intracranial orifice of the optic canal and of the penetration of the maxillary nerve into the cavernous sinus. The subjects were 162 cases with cavernous sinus lesions. They were classified by the two methods. There was a total of 111 cases (69%) of unclassified cases in Jefferson's classification and 45 (28%) in Ishikawa's classification. The anterior type was frequently encountered in cases caused by inflammations and both posterior and whole types were caused by tumors in Ishikawa's classification. It was concluded that Ishikawa's classification is clinically useful to identify and classify the localization of cavernous sinus lesions.