BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders

Background: Aneurysmal bone cysts are relatively uncommon in the facial skeleton. These usually affect the mandible but origin from the coronoid process is even rarer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of a coronoid process aneurysmal bone cyst presenting as temporal fossa swelling. Case presentation: A 17 year old boy presented with a progressively increasing swelling in the left temporal region developed over the previous 8 months. An expansile lytic cystic lesion originating from the coronoid process of the left mandible and extending into the infratemporal and temporal fossa regions was found on CT scan. It was removed by a superior approach to the infratemporal fossa. Conclusion: Aneurysmal bone cyst of the coronoid process can attain enormous dimensions until the temporal region is also involved. A superior approach to the infratemporal fossa is a reasonable approach for such cases, providing wide exposure and access to all parts of the lesion and ensuring better control and complete excision. Background Aneurysmal bone cyst (ABC) usually affects long bones of the body and its involvement of facial bones is relatively rare. Mandible is usual site of involvement in facial skeleton but usually it originates from the region of body and ramus (in the region of molars) [1,2]. At few occasions, it is reported to be derived from the condyle also [3-5]. Involvement of coronoid process is quite rare. There are few reports found in the literature describing involvement of coronoid process by ABC [6-8]. Mainly coronoid process was involved in one case [6], while ramus was also involved in the other one [7], and extensive involvement of ramus and condyle was also evident in one case [8]. Infratemporal fossa was involved in all these cases. They presented as cheek swelling or swelling in zygomatic region. We report a case of ABC involving only coronoid process with infratemporal and temporal fossa extension. It presented to us as temporal fossa mass. It adds one more aspect in diversity of clinical and biological behavior of ABC in maxillofacial region. Published: 14 March 2006 BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders2006, 6:4 doi:10.1186/1472-6815-6-4 Received: 17 December 2005 Accepted: 14 March 2006 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6815/6/4 © 2006Goyal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.