RESUMO
Through 14 recent cases, the authors review the main clinical syndromes leading to the diagnosis of petrous and brain-stem meningiomas. The cochleovestibular syndrome, the most frequent amongst them, recalls the symptomatology of an acoustic neuroma. The jugular foramen syndrome is similar to that seen in jugulo-tympanic paragangliomas. The middle ear tumor syndrome is specific to primary or secondary intrapetrous tumors. The positive diagnosis of meningiomas belongs to the field of CAT scares and mainly of NMR, which define morphological characters, none of them being specific: oval shape, the closed angle sign, intratumor calcification, hyperdensity, osseous changes on the posterior aspect of the petrous bone NMR permits a very precise localization and definition of the tumor which is necessary among the per-op studies. This decreases the occurrence of once frequent surgical surprises.