Intracranial Dural Metastases and Diagnostic Misunderstandings

Abstract

Dural metastases are rare intracranial tumors. They are not sufficiently studied and there are still no specific methods are not to detect them. Differential diagnosis is difficult and only the histologic examination allows a sure diagnosis. We reviewed data records from 2016 to 2020 of patients treated for dural metastases. We included only patients with complete anamnestic history, with both known and unknown primitive cancer. Collected data were compared with recent literature. We operated on 16 single dural metastases, also from very unusual cancers. The most common primitive type of cancer, in our series, was lung tumor, in contrast to prostate cancer, recently reported in literature as the most frequent. A retrospective multicenter study is mandatory to assess new epidemiologic evidences.