Schwannoma of the tip of the nose: MRI

We report a schwannoma with a rare location at the tip of the nose in a 20-year-old woman with an otherwise unremarkable medical history. The imaging findings unterline the usefulness of MRI in narrowing down the differential diagnosis of masses in this region. Once the diagnosis was focussed on a neural origin of the mass, the exact nature of the tumour could not be predicted from the MRI, although the presence of a capsule on imaging studies as well as at operation suggested it was probably a schwannoma. A schwannoma must be considered when one encounters a sharply delineated mass at the tip of the nose, showing high signal on T2-weighted images and strongly contrast enhancement. Received: 17 July 1997 Accepted: 2 October 1997