CLINICAL CASE OF PARANEOPLASTIC NEUROLOGICAL SYNDROME IN A CHILD WITH NEUROBLASTOMA

Abstract

Paraneoplastic syndromes are of particular difficulties in establishing a timely diagnosis of a malignant tumor esp. in cases when the decease development is occurred chronologically much earlier than the appearance of its specific symptoms and the neoplasm growth’s first signs. And the clinical manifestation can be represented solely by an isolated clinic of paraneoplastic syndrome, which in its turn is much alike the symptoms of the paraneoplastic neurological syndrome (PNS). Authors represent a clinical case of a severe PNS coupled with the central nervous system (CNS) lesion, mainly the cerebellum, which was manifested clinically by ataxia, tremor, myoclonus, dysartria, cognitive and mental impairment and psychotic disorders, which in its turn had delayed the timely diagnosis of neuroblastoma (left-sided intermixed adrenal ganglioneuroblastoma with metastatic tumors in ipsilateral lymph nodes and paranephric fat, deletion 1q, deletion 1p36 and MYCN amplification - all negative and INSS stage 2B) in a 5 y/o male patient. No ‘classical’ opsoclonus-myoclonus was a matter of diagnosis due to the opsoclonus absence during the whole disease course. This clinical case observation publication is having a practical purpose of pinning attention to paraneoplastic syndromes among practitioners of wide spectrum: neurologists, infectionists and pediatricians.