[Presurgical endovascular treatment of symptomatic carotid stenosis caused by a meningioma of the planum sphenoidale].

INTRODUCTION: Cerebral infarction is a very rare presenting symptom of a meningioma. This form of clinical onset poses the challenge of treating ischaemic events before dealing with the tumour surgically. CASE REPORT: A 48-year-old woman from Georgia who visited due to loss of strength in the right-hand side of the body, intense headache and self-limiting episodes of forgetting her own language. Computerised axial tomography scans of her head revealed a left frontal expansive process and hypodense lesions in the left caudate nucleus. The patient underwent an unfavourable progression, with episodes of neurological deterioration and hemiparesis of the right-hand side and aphasia, which alternated with periods of improvement. Magnetic resonance imaging and an angiographic study revealed tumour occlusion of the left middle cerebral artery, secondary to a clinoidal meningioma. Treatment involved endovascular recanalisation of the middle cerebral artery and later surgical removal of the meningioma. CONCLUSIONS: Endovascular treatment by means of angioplasty, prior to the surgical excision of the tumour, is a technique that enables the incidence of ischaemic events to be diminished.