Intraspinal neuroblastoma in a newborn baby.

Intraspinal and spinal cord tumours are quite rare in childhood. Most authors reporting cases of tumours found within the spinal canal use the term 'spinal cord tumour' in a broad sense without regard to whether they are spinal cord tumours proper or of extradural origin. In this paper we refer to an 'intraspinal' neuroblastoma in a newborn infant, and wish to emphasize that though it is intraspinal, yet it is not a tumour of the spinal cord proper, but is situated extradurally. Anderson (1953) described 21 cases, of which the youngest was 5 months old. Dandy (1925) reported on such tumours in 36 patients of whom five were under 15 years of age. Ford (1944), amongst 70,000 neurological cases in children, found only three spinal cord tumours, the youngest child with this type of tumour being 9 years old. Stookey (1928) analysed 160 cases of spinal cord tumour of which only eight were under 12 years of age. In Elsberg's series (Elsberg, 1925) the youngest patient was 3 years old and Buchanan's youngest patient was aged 3 months (Buchanan, 1950). In the entire world literature, according to Mosberg (1951) and Elefant, Jeklerova and Lesny (1955), altogether 25 cases diagnosed during the first year of life have so far been described. Mosberg's studies have also shown that 75 % of all spinal tumours diagnosed during the first year of life consist of lipomas, dermoids, teratoids or teratomas. Ingraham and Matson (1954) divide intraspinal tumours in children into three groups: (1) congenital tumours, ranging from simple dermoid cysts to highly variable tridermal teratomasi; (2) intramedullary gliomas, including astrocytomas, ependymomas, medulloblastomas and multiform glioblastomas; (3) extradural extension of paraspinal lesions, including neuroblastoma, reticulum cell sarcoma and lymphosarcoma. Omitting cases of teratoma, dermoid and tumours associated with developmental anomalies such as spina bifida, meningocoele or sinus pilonides, the present authors were unable to find in accessible literature more than two cases of pure spinal cord tumour diagnosed in the newborn (Katcher, 1952; Parkinson, Medovy and Mitchell, 1954). They therefore consider it appropriate to record the following case.