Pheochromocytoma in children; report of case.

THERE ARE many causes of hypertension in children, one of the most interesting and rarest of which is chromaffin tumor of the adrenal medulla, usually called "pheochromocytoma," or chromaffinoma of extra-adrenal chromaffin tissue, termed "paraganglioma." Pheochromocytoma is rare in adults and rarer still in children. However, over the past 10 years there has been an increasing number of cases reported in children. This increase seems to be largely due to the development and use of pharmacologic tests, especially the histamine test,* the piperoxan (benzodioxan) test,f and the phentolamine (Regitine) test.‡ Most authorities agree that these tests are highly reliable and very useful in establishing a diagnosis of pheochromocytoma. The purpose of this paper is to report a case of pheochromocytoma in a child and to review the literature on pheochromocytoma in children. REPORT OF CASE A 12-year-old white boy, admitted to the Mayo Clinic on March 5, 1954, had complained