Neurilemmoma

Excerpt

The vast majority of tumors of the peripheral nervous system arise from the cells of Schwann, rather than from the nerve cells themselves. Schwann cells, or neurilemma, are cells that are responsible for the production of the myelin sheath around neuronal axons. Most of these tumors are benign and designated as "schwannomas" or "neurilemmomas," and may appear spontaneously as solitary lesions, or as part of an underlying clinical condition such as neurofibromatosis. These vast majority of these tumors are slow-growing, encapsulated tumors of these Schwann cells within a collagenous matrix.