1992 Volume 85 Issue 12 Pages 1919-1923
A 39-year-old man with dull pain in both eyes visited our clinic. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed a midline cyst in the posterior wall of the nasopharynx which had high intensity signal characteristics in both T1-and T2-weighted pulse sequences. After removal of the anterior wall of the cyst, his pain disappered, and he has been well since. Histological sections revealed epitheliallined cyst with no evidence of lymphoid tissue, consistent with Tornwaldt's cyst.
Tornwaldt's cyst results from the embryological relationship of the notochord and the pharyngeal endoderm.
MRI is well suited to distiguish this cyst because of its greater soft-tissue contrast resolution and of the anatomic advantage obtained by multiplanar views.
