Unique pineal gland metastasis of clear cell renal carcinoma: case report and review of the literature

The metastatic involvement of the pineal gland is an extremely unusual event; it has a 4% incidence in patients with disseminated neoplasias. Most metastatic pineal lesions are asymptomatic. Only in a small number of cases the symptoms produced by metastatic involvement of this organ precede those of the primary tumor or those of another metastatic site. To our knowledge the herein reported case is the first in which the pineal gland was apparently the unique metastatic site of a primitive kidney carcinoma and where the symptoms produced by metastasis in the pineal region were the first sign of the disease.