Superficial siderosis of the central nervous system in a patient with asymptomatic sacral paraganglioma as source of chronic bleeding.

INTRODUCTION

Superficial siderosis of the central nervous system is an infrequent pathology secondary to chronic bleeding into the cerebrospinal fluid. Spinal tumors are infrequent cause of superficial siderosis being ependymoma the most common etiology.

CASE REPORT: We report the case of a woman with sensorineural hearing loss and cerebellar ataxia, diagnosed of superficial siderosis on brain MRI. She had no previous history of axial back pain or radicular leg pain or bowel or bladder incontinence. On spine MRI an intradural lesion was found at the S1 level. No signs of intratumoral hemorrhage were observed on MRI gradient-echo images. At surgery, an intradural soft mass with signs of chronic bleeding was completely resected. Based on microscopic examination and immunohistochemistry of the specimen, a diagnosis of paraganglioma World Health Organization grade I was made.

CONCLUSIONS

Since the only proven treatment able to prevent further deterioration from superficial siderosis is to stop chronic bleeding into subarachnoid space, is of paramount importance to establish an early diagnosis of the source of bleeding. Cases of unexplained superficial siderosis of central nervous system should include routine spinal MRI to rule out bleeding of spinal tumor even in asymptomatic patients. Due to severity of potential deterioration caused by superficial siderosis, any tumoral lesion observed on spinal MRI even without documented sings of bleeding should be considered for resection.