Abstract
A 67-year-old patient with a history of fully treated bowel carcinoma presented with a short history of unilateral lumbosacral radiculopathy. No neurological deficit was found on examination. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrated initially L4/5 foraminal narrowing that was believed to be the cause for the patient's symptoms; however, a nerve root block led to no improvement in symptoms. MRI was repeated at 5 months and demonstrated a mass causing compression of the S1 nerve. However, the patient declined surgical decompression. MRI at 14 months subsequently showed rapid growth of the lesion suggestive of an aggressive process such as a metastatic lesion or even a nerve sheath tumor such as a Schwannoma. Open biopsy and decompression revealed the lesion to be a facet joint cyst and the patient recovered well and had satisfactory postoperative imaging at 3 months follow-up. There are no reports in the literature of facet joint cysts growing this quickly and thus mimicking other forms of lesion.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open
access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting
copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given
appropriate credit.
Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or
adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
)
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which
permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial
purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of
adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original
work is properly cited.
