Metastases of a breast cancer to skull base

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a frequent malignant disease which tends to develop distant metastases, but only very rarely in the head and neck region. Case report: We present two case reports of patients with metastases of invasive BC in this area. They are of different clinical manifestation with different time relation to the primary tumor and different symptomatology. In the case of the first patient, a few years without evidence of malignant disease after treatment of primary tumor in complete remission. In the case of the second patient, as the first symptom of undiagnosed disease. Metastases were clinically observed in the skull base and maxillary sinus, manifesting neurologically with foramen jugulare syndrome and orbital symptoms, resp. In both cases, correlations between histological and clinical findings were essential for diag­ nosis. Palliative multimodal treatment was then employed. Conclusion: Metastases of BC in the head and neck region occur only very rarely. The extremely variable symptomatology depends on the location of the metastasis and the affected structures. This might be a pitfall for diagnostics, especially in cases of an unidentified primary breast tumor, which may result in a delay of correct diagnosis. In addition, the correlation between histopathological and clinical findings might be of great relevance in these cases.