Meningioma probable reason for trephination

Abstract

Abstract The incomplete human skull with a trephined hole in the right frontal bone region was identified in 1997 among the collections of the Municipal Museum in Sedlčany. The calvaria of Sedlčany dated back to the period AD 1298–1550 years ( 14 C calibrated age is 528±126 yr BP). The smooth edges of the entire hole indicate a healing process has occured. We can distinguish the application of three surgical techniques in the described trephined hole on the right side of the frontal bone region of the calvaria. The skull is that of a man over 50 years old. ‘Grooving’ remained visible mainly in the lower half of the trephined hole above the eye socket. Four tiny semicircular incisions in the upper edge of the hole probably represent traces of the ‘drilling’ technique. Thinning of the wall in the upper part of the hole was evidently caused by a ‘scraping’ technique. It is hypothesized that the medical reason for the trephination was to relieve the symptoms brought about by increased intracranial pressure caused by a dextral parasagittal meningioma. It is explained by an imprint of middle meningeal arteries. The groove produced by the right middle meningeal artery is deeper and wider than the one on the left side. The bone symptoms for meningioma consist of: a complex of the widened groove at the middle meningeal artery, relating to the cavity for a big Pacchionian (arachnoid) granulation situated along the superior sagittal venous sinus, completed by vascularization of diploe with three 1 mm foramina of vessels, and with a region of bone sclerosis visible in the X‐ray picture. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.