Nervous system dysfunction in children with paraneoplastic syndromes.

Paraneoplastic syndromes are complexes of symptoms and signs that occur in association with cancer and that are unexplained by the known anatomic and physiologic characteristics of the tumor. Many of these syndromes are neurologic in nature or have consequences for the central or peripheral nervous system. These syndromes have been well characterized in adults. With the exception of opsoclonus-myoclonus, little has been written about the occurrence of such syndromes in children. This review looks at published reports of paraneoplastic syndromes in children and concludes that paraneoplastic syndromes in childhood differ from those seen in adulthood because of differences in both the host and the kinds of neoplasms most prevalent in each age group. Paraneoplastic syndromes may be underreported in childhood because of the difficulty in eliciting specific neurologic complaints from children and because a thorough neurologic examination is often not undertaken as a matter of routine.