Cartilaginous meningiomas are extremely rare histological variants of metaplastic meningiomas. They are characterised by the cartilaginous transformation observed within the tumour.
Although reported numbers are too small to confirm that this is definitely the case, they appear to share similar clinical presentation and treatment and prognosis as other meningiomas, and thus these features are not repeated here.
Epidemiology
Less than 5 cases were reported in the medical literature, among them one localised in the spine in a child 3. It is still not possible to spot an epidemiological pattern for this meningioma subtype.
Pathology
Metaplastic meningiomas are characterised by tumour cells sharing the characteristics of tissues from other parts of the body. In this subtype, they show cartilaginous tumour proliferation in different degrees of differentiation in between typical meningioma cells.