Heterotopic Brain of the Tongue

Abstract

A 6-week-old male infant with lingual mass suffered from feeding difficulty and respiratory distress. Resected specimens revealed brain tissue composed of astroglia, oligodendroglia, ependyma, choroid plexus, neuronal cells, and primitive cells but no other elements suggestive of teratoma, therefore it was diagnosed as heterotopic brain of the tongue. ACTA PATHOL.

Glial choristoma of the tongue. Clinicopathological analysis of a case and pathogenetic insights

“…Histologically, all the lesions shared glial tissue. In some cases, other brain tissue elements, in including neurons, ependymal-like epithelium, and choroid plexus-like structures were also detected in variable combination and proportion [5,6,7,8,11,13,15,17,19,20,21,25,26]. In one case [25], meningeal-like tissue was detected as well.…”

“…Glial choristoma, which is a choristoma composed by glial cells either in association or not with other normal brain tissue elements, is more commonly restricted to the craniofacial region where the tongue is rarely involved [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]. Even though different terms have been used to define the lesion, including glioma [3,4,16], glial/gliomatous teratoma [5,10], heterotopic brain, or neural/glial/neuroglial tissue [6,7,8,9,11,24,28], the term glial choristoma is more appropriate because the lesion is a developmental anomaly and not a neoplasm and produces a tumour-like tissue mass [1,2]. Surgical excision with free margins is curative and, because the lesion may be only suspected at clinical examination, histology and immunohistochemistry are mandatory for the definitive diagnosis [13,15,…”

Glial choristoma of the tongue: report of a case and review of the literature

“…The morphological features, in 7 (43.8%) of the 16 tongue lesions including the present case, revealed a mixture of at least two constant elements of cerebral tissues [3,11,12,17,19]. These were a combination of either neuroglial tissue and choroid plexus or neuroglial tissue and clefts lined by ependymaltype epithelium.…”

“…The most distressing clinical symptom reported in some of these cases was their rapid rate of growth, which simulated that of malignancies. Most of the tongue lesions did not cause any complication, and only a few were associated with minor breathing and feeding problems that were easily corrected after surgical removal of the mass [1,3,6,11,14,16,19]. Surgical excision was curative in all cases, including the present one.…”

A case report of glial choristoma of the tongue

“…Heterotopic brain tissue (glial choristoma) of the tongue is an extremely rare developmental malformation, with only 14 cases (including the present) having been reported in the English literature [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The differential diagnosis for tumor of the tongue includes teratoma, cavernous hemangioma, lipoma, hamartoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, leiomyoma, fibrosarcoma, neurofibroma, fibromyxoma, myofibromas and myofibromatosis, glioma, congenital cystadenoma, congenital granular cell tumor, squamous papilloma, dermoid cysts, epithelial, cartilaginous or osseous choristoma, benign epithelial cyst (mucous cyst), thyroglossal duct cyst, enterocystoma, bronchogenic cyst, cyst of foregut origin, pyogenic granuloma, lingual thyroid, vascular malformation, and congenital lymphatic malformation [1,11,13,15].…”