Malignant Paraganglioma of Urinary Bladder: A Case Report

Malignant paraganglioma of the urinary
bladder is a rare tumor. Clinical diagnosis of
this tumor relies on high index of suspicion and
high levels of blood and urine catecholamines.
The malignancy of the paraganglioma is
established upon the presence of local
aggressive behavior or distant metastasis.
Imaging studies play an important role in
detecting tumor foci, in determining the extent
of the tumor invasion as well as in pre-surgical
evaluation. We have presented the CT and MR
imaging features of a case of malignant
paraganglioma of the urinary bladder. The
tumor demonstrated high signal intensity on
both T1-weighted images and T2-weighted
images and being enhanced by MRI contrast
medium. MR imaging is superior to CT in
delineating the extent of the tumor invasion
into the bladder wall because of its better tissue
contrast and multiplanar imaging capability.