Four cases of pediatric neuralgic amyotrophy treated with immunotherapy: one-year follow-up and literature review

Abstract

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.