Meningeal and cerebral involvement in multiple myeloma patients.

Cerebral involvement is an unusual complication in multiple myeloma: herein four patients who presented myelomatous meningitis with multiple intraparenchymal lesions or a localized cerebral plasmacytoma are described. Two of these patients relapsed with meningeal involvement and a very limited disease outside the central nervous system after an initial complete remission obtained with induction chemotherapy. In the other two cases, the cerebral tumor appeared during first-line treatment. Cytological examination of the cerebrospinal fluid and magnetic resonance were essential for diagnosis. Different modalities of treatment were used, including intrathecal chemotherapy, cranial irradiation, and systemic chemotherapy with high-dose methotrexate and cytarabine, achieving improvement of neurological symptoms in three of four patients.