Hamed SA, Mekkawy MA, Abozaid H. Differential diagnosis of a vanishing brain space occupying lesion in a child. World J Clin Cases 2015; 3(11): 956-964 [PMID: 26601100 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i11.956]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Sherifa A Hamed, MD, Consultant Neurologist, Professor, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Assiut University Hospital, Floor # 7, Room # 4, Assiut 71516, Egypt. hamed_sherifa@yahoo.com
Research Domain of This Article
Allergy
Article-Type of This Article
Case Report
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Nov 16, 2015; 3(11): 956-964 Published online Nov 16, 2015. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i11.956
Differential diagnosis of a vanishing brain space occupying lesion in a child
Sherifa A Hamed, Mohamad A Mekkawy, Hosam Abozaid
Sherifa A Hamed, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Assiut University Hospital, Assiut 71516, Egypt
Mohamad A Mekkawy, Department of Oncology, Assiut University Hospital, Assiut 71516, Egypt
Hosam Abozaid, Department of Radiology, Assiut University Hospital, Assiut 71516, Egypt
Author contributions: All the authors equally contributed to this work.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed by and received exemption from the Assiut University Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: The study participant provided written informed consent for inclusion in this case report.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Sherifa A Hamed, MD, Consultant Neurologist, Professor, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Assiut University Hospital, Floor # 7, Room # 4, Assiut 71516, Egypt. hamed_sherifa@yahoo.com
Telephone: +2-88-2371820 Fax: +2-88-2333327
Received: April 15, 2015 Peer-review started: April 18, 2015 First decision: May 13, 2015 Revised: June 30, 2015 Accepted: August 4, 2015 Article in press: August 7, 2015 Published online: November 16, 2015 Processing time: 210 Days and 5.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: A vanishing brain space occupying lesion is defined as reduction or disappearance of a brain lesion spontaneously or after steroid treatment to ≤ 70% of its size before establishing its definitive diagnosis. A vanishing solitary neoplastic/non-neoplastic (pseudotumor) (e.g., infection/abscess, granuloma, radiation necrosis, multiple sclerosis) brain mass in a child poses a considerable diagnostic difficulty particularly deeply seated lesions in which tissue diagnosis is difficult to be done. In clinical practice, neuroimaging has to be done every 6-12 mo for at least 3-5 years to follow up after complete remission of the patient. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has been proved to be valuable for diagnostic differentiation between tumor and pseudotumor lesions. MRS provides information related to the metabolic activity in the culprit lesion (e.g., neoplastic processes, demyelination, cell necrosis or gliotic changes).
