Osmangazi Tıp Dergisi, vol.44, no.6, pp.779-785, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
The pineal gland metastatic disease is relatively uncommon. Our research’s objective was to assess pineal gland metastasis findings from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We queried the radiology reports of brain MRI examinations performed between September 2010 and December 2019. After identifying cases, patient characteristics including sex, age, diagnosis, survival time, and MRI features including size (largest cross-sectional diameter), T1- Weighted Image (WI) signal, T2-WI signal, contrast enhancement, and additional brain metastatic involvement area were evaluated. Our investigation identified 7 patients with pineal gland metastasis. Underlying malignancies were lung (N 2), breast (N 2), prostate cancer (N 1), neuroblastoma (N 1), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (N 1). The average survival period after the detection of the pineal gland metastasis is 3.14 ± 3.93 months. The lesions ranged in size from 0.8 to 1.8 cm (mean 1.18±0.38 cm). Six tumors were isointense to gray matter both on T1-WI and T2-WI. One showed heterogeneous signal intensities on T1-WI and T2-WI. 6 out of 7 tumors showed homogenous solid enhancement while one tumor showed heterogeneous enhancement due to necrosis. Two patients had leptomeningeal, one patient had pituitary stalk, one patient had parenchyma, and one patient had calvarium-dural metastases. In the remaining 3 patients, no accompanying metastases were observed in brain. The presence of pineal gland lesions in patients with known malignancy should increase suspicion of metastatic involvement.