Abstract
Here, we describe our experience with secondary neurolymphomatosis (NL) in non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients, with the emphasis on the diagnosis process. A retrospective chart review of 12 patients from 3 tertiary academic centers between January 2005 and December 2015 was conducted. Secondary NL was diagnosed within a median interval of 10 months (range 5–41 months) after initial diagnosis of NHL. Painful neuropathy was present in 66.7%, but the diagnosis of NL was delayed in nine out of 12 patients (75.0%) by median of 2 months. Diagnostic modalities included CSF analysis performed in nine patients (75.0%), electrodiagnostic studies in seven (58.3%), radiologic studies in all, and nerve biopsy in two (16.7%). The diagnostic yield was 100.0% (15/15) for FDG-PET/CT and 75.0% (9/12) for MRI. Our experience emphasizes the importance of clinical suspicion of NL in patients with previous history of NHL and selection of diagnostic modality with the greatest clinical utility.
Potential conflict of interest
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1312376.