Role of Squash Cytology in the Diagnosis of Pediatric Intracranial Tumors in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Solitary plasmacytoma is a rare entity with an incidence of about 5% of all plasma cell dyscrasias. It is the monoclonal proliferation of plasma cells in either bone or soft tissue without systemic involvement. Depending upon location, these can be of two types: solitary bone plasmacytoma (SBP) and solitary extramedullary plasmacytoma (SEP). The most common site of involvement by SBP is axial skeleton, such as the vertebra, but intervertebral disc involvement is very rare. We have reported the involvement of disc with SBP in one of the cases of our case series. Diagnosis of plasmacytoma was confirmed by histopathological examination of biopsy tissue in all three cases. A bone marrow examination was done to rule out systemic involvement by the disease. An immunohistochemistry correlation was obtained in one case. The risk of progression to multiple myeloma (MM) is more in the case of SBP, and it is important to distinguish between the two as treatment and prognosis are different. We have presented this case series to highlight the occurrence of SBP with such clinical presentation and also to report the involvement of intervertebral disc with SBP, which is very rare, and only a few such cases are reported in the literature.