Objective:

To describe two cases of Occipital Condyle Syndrome caused by two different primary malignancies at one institution. 

Background:

Occipital condyle syndrome (OCS) is a rare syndrome that most often presents as a unilateral headache with typically occipital pain and ipsilateral tongue paresis. This occurs as a direct result of erosion of the occipital condyle. As the 12th cranial nerve traverses out of the hypoglossal canal, it courses near the occipital condyle making it susceptible to entrapment or structural damage in this region from boney metastasis.

Design/Methods:

Case Series/NA

Results:

Previous reports suggest breast or prostate cancers may be the most likely primary malignancies to cause OCS. Here we report two cases where metastatic lesions resulted in occipital condyle syndrome with primary tumors other than breast or prostate cancer. One patient with metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma and another with metastatic urothelial carcinoma.

Conclusions:

While intracranial metastatic disease is far more common, metastatic disease to the bony skull base does occur and must be considered in the differential for any patient presenting with unilateral or occipital headache and tongue deviation.