Abstract
Schwannomas are benign lesions that arise from the nerve sheath of cranial nerves. The most common schwannomas arise from the 8th cranial nerve (the vestibulo-cochlear nerve) followed by trigeminal and facial nerves and then from glossopharyngeal, vagus, and spinal accessory nerves. Schwannomas involving the oculomotor, trochlear, abducens and hypoglossal nerves are very rare. We report a very unusual spinal accessory nerve schwannoma which occupied the fourth ventricle and extended inferiorly to the upper cervical canal. The radiological features have been detailed. The diagnostic dilemma was due to its midline posterior location mimicking a fourth ventricular lesion like medulloblastoma and ependymoma. Total excision is the ideal treatment for these tumors. A brief review of literature with tabulations of the variants has been listed.
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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.
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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.
