RESEARCH ARTICLE
Clinical Practice: Giant Cell Tumour of the Jaw Mimicking Bone Malignancy on Three-Dimensional Computed Tomography (3D CT) Reconstruction
Alessandro Lanza1, 2, Luigi Laino2, Luigi Rossiello3, Letizia Perillo2, Antonio Dell Ermo2, Nicola Cirillo1, 4, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 73
Last Page: 77
Publisher ID: TODENTJ-2-73
DOI: 10.2174/1874210600802010073
Article History:
Received Date: 7/12/2007Revision Received Date: 19/12/2007
Acceptance Date: 2/5/2008
Electronic publication date: 3/6/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
A wide range of diseases may present with radiographic features of osteolysis. Periapical inflammation, cysts and benign tumours, bone malignancies, all of these conditions may show bone resorption on radiograph. Features of the surrounding bone, margins of the lesion, and biological behaviour including tendency to infiltration and root resorption, may represent important criteria for distinguishing benign tumours from their malign counterpart, although the radiographic aspect of the lesion is not always predictive. Therefore a critical differential diagnosis has to be reached to choose the best management. Here, we report a case of giant cell tumour (GCT) whose radiological features by computed tomography (CT) suggested the presence of bone malignancy, whereas the evaluation of a routine OPT scan comforted us about the benign nature of the lesion. A brief review of the literature on such a benign but locally aggressive neoplasm is also provided.
