Abstract

The pineal gland is a small pinecone-shaped and functionally endocrine structure located in the epithalamus region. Developmentally, the pineal gland is considered as a part of the epithalamus. It plays a role in the entrainment of the circadian rhythms of an organism by producing melatonin, a functionally important hormone. Lesions of the pineal region are rare compared to other parts of the brain. A lesion may be tumorous or non-tumorous in nature. The most common lesions are tumors that are pineal parenchymal tumors (PPT) in origin. Gliomas are the second most common tumors in the pineal region. We report a case of a high-grade oligodendroglioma, not commonly seen in the pineal region, in a 45-year-old male. The patient was suspected to have a mass in the pineal region on a computed tomography (CT) scan and histology confirmed the diagnosis of oligodendroglioma. This is a unique case because only five such cases have been reported so far.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-18-2017

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Cureus, v. 9, issue 8, e1576.

© Copyright 2017 Naqvi et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.1576

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