A rare case of lumbosacral meningioma: nondural attachment and possible enlargement by orally administered sex steroid.

STUDY DESIGN

A case report is presented.

OBJECTIVES

To present a very rare case of orally ingested sex hormone pills inducing nondurally attached meningioma in the lumbosacral region.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA

Meningiomas are known to enlarge in response to female sex hormones. At this writing, few cases of nondurally based intradural meningioma have been reported. Moreover, meningiomas in the lumbosacral region are very rare. Spinal meningiomas predominantly arise in the fourth to sixth decades of life and are more common in women.

METHODS

The patient was a 20-year-old woman. She had undergone oral sex steroid therapy for long-term oligomenorrhea. The patient complained of intolerable lumbago and numbness in her buttocks. Nonopioid analgesics did not relieve her pain, and she was unable to walk without the aid of a walker. Radiography disclosed a lumbosacral intradural tumor.

RESULTS

Complete removal of the tumor was performed. The tumor was not adherent to the dura, and its appearance was that of a typical neurilemmoma. However, the pathologic diagnosis was meningioma.

CONCLUSIONS

The tumor in the reported case may have enlarged in response to orally ingested sex steroid pills. Nondural attachment intradural meningiomas are quite uncommon. The gross appearance of the tumor during surgery was typical of neurilemmoma. All the cases reported so far, including the current case, have involved tumor located in the lumbosacral region. Care must be taken in the management of lumbosacral intradural tumors because tumors resembling neurilemmoma may in fact represent meningioma, some subtypes of which possess a high rate of recurrence.