Neurologic manifestations as the presenting symptoms in lung cancer

Abstract

This case series reports 100 patients with lung cancer and their presenting neurologic symptoms and sings. 78% of patients were maleand 22% were female. Mean age was 62±1.04 years with a peak age between 65 and 75 years. Most patients presented with pulmonary problems (58%) and neurologic deficits as the presenting manifestations were found to be 30% along with pulmonary symptoms and 12% laking them. Neurologic deficits were caused by local tumor invasion, metastasis and paraneoplastic syndromes in 16%, 23% and 3% of the cases respectively . Recurrent nerve pusly was the most common presenting neurologic sign. Common metastatic sites were spinal cord (12%) and brain (11%). Local invasion was mostly found in squamous cell and brain metastasisin adenocarcinoma. In refrence to spinal metastasis most patients had small cell and squamous cell carcinoma. Ophthalmoplegia as a paraneoplastic syndromeis not reported in lung cancer but one of our patients developed complete ophthalmoplegia in left eye with normal imaging studies that seems interesting and needs further investigation.

Keywords

• Lung cancer
• Presenting neurologic symptom
• Local invasion
• Paraneoplastic syndrome