2020 Volume 29 Issue 4 Pages 291-296
Prognosis of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection has been changing from a lethal infection to a controllable disease in the past two decades, owing to highly active antiretroviral therapy. However, the diagnosis of intracranial mass lesions related to the infection remains challenging, and repeated examinations, blood tests, lumbar punctures, and image examinations do not lead a definitive diagnosis in some cases. Therefore, brain biopsy has to be performed by neurosurgeons for purpose of the definitive diagnosis. There have been no reports summarizing brain biopsies in patients with HIV infection in Japan. We retrospectively studied HIV infected patients with brain mass lesions, in whom diagnosing the condition was difficult, between 2008 and 2017, especially cases requiring neurosurgical biopsy. The biopsy was performed in 7 out of 19 cases for brain mass lesions that were difficult to diagnose clinically. Among the 7 cases, 5 resulted in accurate pathological diagnosis. For further improvements in diagnosis and early treatment, it is important to use not only various diagnostic modalities but also conduct timely biopsies by neurosurgeons.
