[Errors in the evaluation of osteoarticular symptoms]

The authors describe two patients with osteoarticular symptoms. In the first patient they were treated as rheumatic disease, and only after treatment had failed, a neoplastic aetiology was considered. In the second patient the authors considered the articular complaints from the beginning a paraneoplastic syndrome and only the subsequent course of the disease revealed that they were mistaken. It was rheumatoid arthritis with an atypical Caplan syndrome.