Ovarian cancer, a leading cause of death in women, typically spreads locally and rarely metastasizes to the brain or seeds the leptomeninges. We present a case of a 62-year-old woman with a history of treated ovarian cell carcinoma who developed bilateral sensorineural deafness and right-sided facial weakness and on imaging was found to have bilateral internal auditory canal (IAC) masses and le...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis is a serious complication of advanced cancer. Various clinical manifestations may present, such as headache, nausea, seizures, cranial neuropathies. In this article, we report the case of a 65-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer who was admitted to hospital suffering from facial palsy, which was suspected to be caused by leptomeningeal tumor infiltration. ...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis from pancreatic cancer is a rare finding thought to occur late in the natural history of the disease. Here we present two cases of leptomeningeal carcinomatosis from BRCA mutation-associated pancreatic cancer including one patient in whom it developed during treatment with a PARP-inhibitor. We review the literature and discuss the possibility that BRCA-associated p...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis is rare, and its precise incidence is unknown. It is associated with a wide spectrum of solid and hematological malignancies. To complicate its diagnosis, the clinical presentation of leptomeningeal carcinomatosis can be variable. We report a case of a 38-year-old male with bilateral facial nerve paralysis as first presentation of lung adenocarcinoma. To our knowle...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, known by a variety of names, including leptomeningeal metastases and neoplastic meningitis, indicates spread of tumor to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and invasion of the subarachnoid space. The term leptomeningeal (from the Greek lepto, meaning “fine” or “slight”) describes the thin meninges, the arachnoid and the pia mater, between which the CSF is located. Alth...

Leptomeningeal metastasis (LMM), also referred to as leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, results from diffuse infiltration of the leptomeninges by malignant cells originating from extra-meningeal primary tumors. It occurs in approximately 5%-10% of patients with solid tumor. Among solid tumors, the most common types leading to infiltration of the leptomeninges are breast cancer, lung cancer, and mel...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis occurred in an old female patient who was on a standard dose of afatinib for the treatment of her non-small cell lung cancer harboring an epidermal growth factor receptor gene mutation sensitive to tyrosine kinase inhibitors when extracranial lesions were still under control. Shifting to high-dose, pulsatile erlotinib dramatically saved her from the devastating con...

There has been recent increase in incidence of leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, possibly due to widespread use of adjuvant trastuzumab and its known poor CNS penetration. Currently there are limited therapeutic options for these patients and outcome is poor. We report two cases of women with HER2 positive breast cancer who developed leptomeningeal carcinomatosis for which they were treated with i...

We report the case of a 65-year-old woman, diagnosed with a breast cancer human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER2) previously negative, who developed leptomeningeal carcinomatosis and was treated with intrathecal (IT) trastuzumab (TST). After five doses of IT trastuzumab, at escalading doses, once weekly, the patient's neurological status stabilised, and that result was maintained for two ...

Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis occurs in approximately 5% of patients with cancer. The most common cancers involving the leptomeninges are breast, lung cancer and melanoma. However, gastric adenocarcinoma has been rarely reported with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis. The presenting manifestations are usually headache, visual disturbances and seizures. We report a case of leptomeningeal metastasis ...