The incidence of acoustic neuroma in autopsy material.

According to reports in the literature, the incidence of occult acoustic neuroma is about 1%. This figure is relatively high compared with clinically encountered neuromas. Our material consisted of 298 temporal bones from 168 cases (129 paired specimens). No occult neuromas were discovered in our material. On the basis of earlier studies, we expected to find one or two occult neuromas, but there was only one case of a large cerebellopontine acoustic neuroma, and the patient died after a neurosurgical operation.