Intracranial subdural sarcoid granuloma. Case report.

A patient is reported in whom a subdural sarcoid granuloma caused symptoms of an intracranial mass lesion, and disappeared following steroid therapy. Twenty-three previous cases with large intracranial sarcoid granulomas have been documented, a review of these 24 cases leads the authors to conclude that: 1) neither symptoms nor nonhistological diagnostic studies, including computerized tomography, differentiate sarcoid from cerebral neoplasms or other central nervous granulomas; and 2) because sarcoid mass lesions frequently respond well to corticosteroid therapy, surgery should probably be reserved for cases in which there is diagnostic uncertainty, a need for emergency decompression, or lack of response to steroids.