[Meningeal carcinosis: early clinical manifestations of inflammatory cancer of the breast].

Inflammatory carcinoma of the breast accounts for only 1-6% of mammary cancer in Caucasian women and is characterized by a poor prognosis; distant metastases frequently appear in fact in an early stage of disease and moreover metastatic spreading follows unpredictable ways. In this study we report on a case of a female patient in whom persistent signs of increased intracranial pressure, following the diagnosis of inflammatory carcinoma of the breast, have been referable to the tumour seeding the meninges in the absence of systemic disease. This peculiar and unusual form of neoplasia is up today a challenge for the clinician, both because of therapeutic difficulty and of unexpected metastases which, in turn, worsen the prognosis. Particularly, in our opinion, meningeal localization must be suspected even in the absence of distant metastases.