Phenobarbital rheumatism in patients with brain tumor.

We reviewed the charts of 429 patients with primary brain tumors treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to determine the frequency, clinical characteristics, and provocative factors involved in the development of the shoulder-hand syndrome. Five percent (20/429) of patients developed this syndrome, which was strongly associated with phenobarbital use (p less than 0.0001) and often produced more short-term disability than the brain tumor itself.