acoustic neuromas, often known as vestibular schwannomas, are non-malignant tumors of the 8th cranial nerve. most generally they occur through the covering cells (schwann cells) with the inferior vestibular nerve (komatsuzaki and tsunoda, 2001). they comprise about 6 percent of all intracranial tumors, about 30% of brainstem tumors, and about 85% of tumors in the region with the cerebellopontine angle -- another 10% are meningiomas. only about 10 tumors are newly diagnosed each year per million persons in the united states,
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acoustic neuroma occurs in two forms: a sporadic form and a form associated with an inherited syndrome called neurofibromatosis type ii (nf2). about 95 percent of all cases are sporadic. nf2 is rare; there are only several thousand affected individuals in the entire united states, corresponding to about 1 in 40,000 individuals. roughly 5% of patients with acoustic neuroma have type ii neurofibromatosis. there is presently no evidence that radiation from cellular phones causes acoustic neuroma (muscat et al, 2002).
signs and symptoms:
hearing loss is the most frequent symptom,
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in spite from the origin of acoustics in the inferior vestibular nerve (komatsuzaki and tsunoda, 2001),
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facial sensory disturbances occurs only in large tumors (about 50 percent of those greater than 2 cm in size). the facial sensory disturbance may respond to carbamazepine medication for neuralgia. facial weakness is uncommon. facial twitching, also referred to as facial synkinesis or hemifacial spasm, occurs in about 10 percent of patients. headache prior to surgery occurs in roughly 40 percent of those with large tumors.
diagnosis of acoustic neuroma: