ABSTRACT
Craniopharyngiomas and germ cell tumors (GCT) may affect the pituitary-hypothalamic region during childhood. Although different in origin, their clinical and radiological features may be similar. In this article we present a 5-year-old girl with clinical and radiological findings (computer tomography calcification) that were initially considered as craniopharyngioma. However clinical outcome, blood and cerebral spinal fluid tumoral markers, and results from anatomopathology and immunohistochemistry disclosed a mixed GCT. This case report highlights that some clinical features and radiological findings of pituitary-hypothalamic tumors may be misdiagnosed as craniopharyngioma mainly when there is a mature teratoma with cartilaginous tissue differentiation.
Subject(s)
Craniopharyngioma/pathology , Hypothalamic Neoplasms/pathology , Neoplasms, Germ Cell and Embryonal/pathology , Pituitary Neoplasms/pathology , Child, Preschool , Craniopharyngioma/diagnostic imaging , Craniopharyngioma/surgery , Diagnosis, Differential , Female , Humans , Hypothalamic Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging , Hypothalamic Neoplasms/surgery , Neoplasms, Germ Cell and Embryonal/diagnostic imaging , Neoplasms, Germ Cell and Embryonal/surgery , Pituitary Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging , Pituitary Neoplasms/surgery , Radiography , Teratoma/diagnostic imaging , Teratoma/pathology , Teratoma/surgeryABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to identify echocardiographic parameters that allow distinguishing different levels of cardiac dysfunction in aortic banded rats. METHODS: Wistar male rats (90-100 g) were subjected to aortic banding (n=23) or a sham operation (n=12). The following echocardiographic parameters were evaluated and used to group rats into groups with similar characteristics using cluster analysis: absolute values and after normalization to body weight of left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVDD) and left atrial systolic diameter; left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVSD); LV weight to body weight ratio (LVW/BW); three indexes of left ventricular shortening (endocardial fractional shortening, EFS; midwall FS, MFS; and posterior wall shortening velocity, (PWSV). RESULTS: The cluster analysis could group aortic banded rats into two groups: mild (n=13) and severe (n=9) stage of heart failure. There was no overlapping among the values of the 95% confidence interval of the following parameters between the two groups: LVDD, LVSD, EFS, MFS, LVW/BW, and PWSV. CONCLUSION: It is feasible to distinguish two groups of aortic banded rats according to the level of cardiac dysfunction using those echocardiographic parameters. This allows to perform longitudinal studies in homogeneous groups of rats with aortic banding and cardiac dysfunction.