How early did headaches appear in patients diagnosed with intracranial meningiomas?

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In a retrospective study, researchers investigated 56 patients with intracranial meningiomas. In every case, the diagnosis was verified by computed tomography followed by selective cerebral angiography.

At admission, 62.5% of patients had functional losses affecting the cranial nerves, 44% had functional losses involving the long nerve tracts, and 23.2% had cerebellar symptoms. Headaches were found in 61% of patients and had already been present almost three and a half years before the final diagnosis. Marked organic psychological disorders were present in 50% of patients and, looking back, had been present for an average of 10 months.

Cerebral convulsive attacks were present in 27% of patients. Partial convulsions, mainly of the “temporal lobe type,” had already been present for an average of 40 months before diagnosis; in cases of generalized tonic-clonic convulsions, diagnosis was made an average of six weeks after the first attack.

The authors concluded that nonspecific symptoms such as headaches, organic psychological disorders and cerebral convulsions may be early indicators of an intracranial space-occupying lesion and should be investigated further without delay.