J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1998;65:609-610 ( October )
Letters to the editor
Successful treatment of peripheral paraneoplastic neurological
syndromes in small cell cancer
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Immune mediated paraneoplastic neurological syndromes often
become manifest before the underlying malignancy is detected. As a
rule, these syndromes do not improve with antineoplastic treatment.1 We report on a case of a patient with small
cell cancer with peripheral neurological syndromes that responded
favourably to combination chemotherapy.
At the time of admission the patient, a 66 year old woman, had had a
combination of peripheral neurological symptoms for 3 months:
(a) muscle weakness and muscle pain of the legs so that she could not walk unattended; (b) a numbness of both legs
from the foot to the middle of the thigh; (c) dryness of
the eyes and mouth; and (d) severe constipation.
Clinical examination showed a load dependent, proximally
accentuated symmetric muscle weakness and hypoaesthesia of the legs. The patient was unable to stand or walk without support. The deep tendon reflexes of . . . [Full text of this article]
