Cerebral metastases of parathyroid carcinoma: a case report and literature review

Parathyroid carcinoma (PC) is an uncommon endocrine tumor. At first presentation, the diagnosis of PC by morphologic analysis is challenging. Indeed, approximatively 50% of metastatic PCs were categorized as benign at the time of first resections. However, single brain metastasis rarely occurs in PC patients and could represent a further obstacle for PC diagnosis in the absence of other symptoms. The present report describes the clinicopathological features of a case of PC intracranial metastases in a 60-year-old woman, who presented space-brain occupying symptoms as a first manifestation. To the best of our knowledge, only ten cases with brain metastasis were reported in the literature.