Existing comment:
Spongioblastoma:
White Male, Ages 72, Admitted Aug. 1880, Died Feb 1920
Diagnosis: Dementia precox
He was hallucinated, silly and deteriorated, failed to remember statements. There was a coarse swaying movement of the head; the patellar reflexes were markedly exaggerated. He mumbled to himself constantly. The pupils were fixed, the left knee-jerk absent, the right normal. No suspicion of intracranial disease was entertained. Death resulted from pneumonia.
Necropsy disclosed overgrowth of the inner table of the skull with osteophytes in the dura. In the left frontal lobe was a large firm rounded mass presenting on the surface, with the dura somewhat adherent to it, so that at first a meningioma was suspected. Section, however, revealed a gliomatous process with cystic degeneration and necrosis. The growth was sharply circumscribed and compressed the brain without invading it. |