Analyses on the misdiagnoses of 25 patients with unilateral optic nerve sheath meningioma

AIM: To investigate clinical features of optic nerve sheath meningioma (ONSM) that was misdiagnosed, and to find methods to reduce the misdiagnoses. METHODS: Retrospective series study. Twenty-five misdisgnosed patients with unilateral ONSM were collected from Jan. 2008 to Jan. 2015 and the clinical records reviewed. RESULTS: Patients were misdiagnosed with acute papillitis most frequently (n=17), immediately followed by optic atrophy (n=8), ischemic optic neuropathy (n=5), acute retrobulbar optic neuritis (n=5), optic disc vasculitis (n=3). For each patient, the minimum frequency of misdiagnoses was once and the maximum was 4 times. As for the lasting time of being misdiagnosed, the shortest was 1.5mo and the longest was 45mo. Twenty-one cases (84%) were once treated with glucocorticoids, and its side effects was found in seventeen patients. Twenty patients (80%) complained with varying degree of vision loss. When a definite diagnosis was made, sixteen cases (64%) showed slight exophthalmos and eighteen cases (72%) had the tubular ONSM. CONCLUSION: ONSM without loss obvious exophthalmos is easily misdiagnosed in clinic, and for most of these ONSMs are tubular.