Department of Neurology, Children's Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China.
Department of Neurology, Wuxi Children's Hospital, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China.
J Int Med Res. 2020 Mar;48(3):300060520912082. doi: 10.1177/0300060520912082.
Neuralgic amyotrophy (NA) is a neurological disease that occurs across all age groups, but its prognosis in children is controversial. The present report adds to the knowledge about its prognosis by describing four cases of pediatric NA in which the patients were treated with immunotherapy and followed up for 1 year. We also present a summary of relevant cases of pediatric NA treated with immunotherapy. The clinical features of the four present cases were similar to those of previously reported cases, and their symptoms improved after immunotherapy. At the 1-year follow-up, three of the children gained near complete recovery, and their improvement was significantly better than that observed at the 2-month follow-up. A review of the literature showed that most previously reported children with NA showed improvement after immunotherapy, but no more than half of the patients recovered fully. These findings indicate that in children with NA, immunotherapy is fairly effective and its benefits improve with time. Thus, long-term follow-up is needed in these patients to determine their prognosis.
神经痛性肌萎缩症（NA）是一种可发生于各年龄段的神经科疾病，但儿童患者的预后仍存在争议。本报告通过描述 4 例接受免疫治疗并随访 1 年的儿科 NA 患者，增加了对其预后的了解。我们还总结了儿科 NA 接受免疫治疗的相关病例。目前 4 例患者的临床特征与以往报道的病例相似，免疫治疗后症状改善。1 年随访时，3 例患儿接近完全康复，其改善程度明显优于 2 个月随访时。文献复习显示，既往报道的大多数儿童 NA 患者经免疫治疗后均有改善，但完全恢复者不超过半数。这些发现表明，儿童 NA 患者免疫治疗效果较好，且随时间推移疗效改善。因此，这些患者需要长期随访以确定其预后。
