NEURINOMA OF THE FACIAL NERVE IN THE MIDDLE EAR AND MASTOID

Abstract

Neurinoma of the facial nerve has received scant mention in the literature and is apparently a rare entity. The discovery of such a tumor at about the time Williams and Pastore¹reported a case from the Mayo Clinic stating that "careful search of the literature has failed to reveal any report of a similar case" prompted a further search of the literature and a report of another case. GENERAL SURVEY Until Virchow's treatise on tumors ( 1863-1867)²all tumors of nerves were classed indiscriminately as neuromas. He subdivided these info true and false neuromas, the false neuromas composed chiefly of connective tissue being classified as neurofibromas. In 1870 von Bruns³described plexiform neurofibroma, but wide attention was not called to this type of tumor until the classic work of von Recklinghausen⁴on neurofibromatosis in 1882. This disorder, universally known as Recklinghausen's disease, is characterized by the appearance of multiple tumors