Cervical rudimentary meningocele in adulthood

Abstract

Almost all cases of cervical spinal dysraphism published to date have involved cystic lesions and were treated in very early childhood. The authors describe a unique case of a 21-year-old woman who harbored a solid cervical rudimentary meningocele. On preoperative CT and MR images, a cutaneous solid mass was shown to be connected to intraspinal contents by a stalk traversing the C-3 lamina defect. The authors resected the cutaneous mass and released the tethering neural band from the vertical axis of the spinal cord without causing injury. Pathological examination demonstrated a dense collagenous tissue containing clusters of meningocytes and psammoma bodies in the cutaneous mass. This rare entity, a spinal dysraphism with a benign natural history, may contribute to the current classification of cervical spinal dysraphism.