[Clinical significance of paraneoplastic syndromes]

The purpose of this paper is to study paraneoplastic syndromes, which often precede the direct manifestations of the responsible carcinoma, in order to determine which clinical features are useful for the early diagnosis of cancer. The 8 patients studied had migrating thrombophlebitis (3 cases), fever of unknown origin (3 cases), polyneuritis (1 case) or dysprotidemia (1 case). It is pointed out that a paraneoplastic syndrome should always lead to a careful investigation for cancer. On the other hand, these syndromes failed to prove useful for early diagnosis in the patients studied. The relevant medical literature is reviewed.