How to read an MRI scan of brain?

[JDeeziac]

I am wondering how radiologists and doctors can tell the difference between a harmless "cyst" of the brain, and something more serious like a brain lesion or gliosis from cns injury? Especially when they say that the cyst has most likely been present since birth and they typically do not cause symptoms. Do cysts appear difference in size or consistency compared to a glial scar or lesion....just curious as to how they know whether an abnormal structure on an mri can is serious or not.

[JDeeziac]

Hey thanks for your insight I appreciate it a lot....Ive been dwelling on this for quite some time and I figured out some important information that I did not know before. I think about that the fact that the cranial nerves exit the brain through openings in the skull, and once they exit through these openings they then become part of the peripheral nervous system. I think this is where my problem lies...I feel that I injured some cranial nerves on the outside of my brain on top of my skull as opposed to the inside of my brain. Thanks for your help and ill keep you updated...good luck with everything as well you seem to have had it pretty rough. I hope that you feel 100 % soon. And ur right once I get to the underlying cause and treat that I will feel much better.

[ggreg]

Cysts look different, they have fluid inside instead of being a solid object, but I am not a physician, so I'm sure there are several variables that help them determine what it is they're looking at.  As for being present since birth, I have a similar cyst in one of my breasts, and it's stayed exactly the same over the years I've had mammos, they said the same thing about that little thing being there since I was a teenager, but in my other breast, one heck of a growth showed up one day and it was obvious to them it was cancer, which it turned out to be upon biopsy.  By the way, I have also had a biopsy of the benign cyst in the other breast, and it is indeed benign.

If you want to be dang sure this is just a benign cyst, they can always biopsy it, but I think you can imagine the difficulty in obtaining a lab sample, as the brain is encased in very hard skull bone, not to mention the posssible damage that can be done to other structures of the brain to find out if it is really a cyst, so i do not think ANY neurosurgeon or other surgeon would dream of doing that for any reason whatsoever.  You MUST consider that not only did a radiologist look at the pictures, his report is also signed off by the chief radiologist, and in addition your own neurologist looks at the pictures to see for himself.  Of course, if you are really concerned about all this, you can wait a year and have another scan done to see if the cyst has changed in size or quality, which it will probably be exactly as it was today.

Your only other avenue of being more sure this thing in your head is a harmless cyst in a more immediate way is to ask for a second opinion from another neurologist, you will need to ask your current neuro's office to forward the report and pictures to the second neuro, and if the second one says it's a cyst, I think you can take that to the bank.  Keep in mind lots of people get quite upset when they find out they have something different in their brain, particularly if some health issue led them to have the pictures done.  The best thing you can do is find out WHY you have a health issue, and since it's not anything in your brain, your neurologist will have to decide what else it might be causing symptoms, and I'll bet once you get proper treatment, you will feel better and forget all about this.  By the way, I get cysts all over my body, I've had a number of them removed and stitched up, so heaven knows what I get inside my body!  In fact, now that I think about it, I got one that's going to come out in an entirely diff location than where they finally do my breast cancer surgery.