ABSTRACT

Mediastinal tumors in children are rare and account for 3% of total chest surgeries performed in this age group. Neuroectodermal tumors are the leading cause of mediastinal tumors, being the ganglioneuroma the most benign and less frequent with an incidence of 1 in 100,000 children. Most of these tumors are asymptomatic and are diagnosed incidentally although 37% secrete mandelic acid (VMA) and/or homovanillic acid (HVA) causing symptoms such as redness, hypertension or secretory diarrhea. The surgical resection by thoracotomy or thoracoscopy are the elective treatment and diagnosis is made by histopathology examination of the surgical specimen. As a rare tumor presentation, a clinical case report and a literature review is presented.

KEYWORDS

Ganglioneuroma, neuroectodermal tumors, mediastinal neoplasms, surgery, thoracotomy.

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