“…Diagnostic imaging enabled preoperative diagnosis of schwannoma in all patients; however, accurate preoperative estimation of the nerves of origin was difficult. One reason for this difficulty was the fact that neural paralysis of the involved nerve, which can be a specific subjective symptom, developed in only 1 of the 21 patients (4.8%), whereas nonspecific subjective symptoms, such as cervical mass and pharyngeal discomfort, occurred in nearly all patients, consistent with previous reports of extracranial schwannoma, 15 cervical vagal schwannoma, 3 and PPS schwannoma. 2 Moreover, although sympathetic chain schwannomas are reported to show no tumor-induced internal carotid artery (ICA)-internal jugular vein (IJV) or common carotid artery (CCA)-IJV separation in the neck, 24,25 nearly half of the patients (5 of 12 patients; 41.7%) in the present study showed this separation, making the differential diagnosis difficult and confusing.…”