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Most patients with neurologic paraneoplastic syndromes develop the neurologic disorder before the cancer is diagnosed. At initial presentation, the cancer may be small and difficult to detect by routine imaging. Furthermore, although some paraneoplastic syndromes suggest a particular cancer (e.g., Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome suggests small-cell lung cancer), others can occur with many cancers, requiring a whole-body search.
These researchers reviewed the records of 43 patients with a suspected neurologic paraneoplastic syndrome who had been referred for PET scanning with [18F]fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG-PET) to identify an occult cancer after negative results on conventional imaging. In 27 patients, the PET scan was negative, but the re…