Which cases are found and missed by neuroblastoma screening at 1 year?
PURPOSE: Neuroblastoma screening during the first half-year of life is associated with a two- to three-fold overdiagnosis. Because regression processes seem to be confined to infancy, we investigated whether screening at 1 year would be associated with fewer overdiagnoses, and we investigated the characteristics of thus-detected and not-detected patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Thin-layer chromatography was used for semiquantitative assessment of urine samples dried on filter paper and obtained when patients were 10 to 14 months old (sample 1) and 17 to 19 months old (sample 2). Abnormal results were reanalyzed quantitatively from the same specimen by high-performance liquid chromatography and/or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. RESULTS: A total of 200,054 children of the German federal states Lower Saxony, Northern Rhine-Westphalia, and Bremen were screened from May 1992 to April 1995. Of 229,078 investigated samples (100%), 228,245 (99.6%) were first, 657 (0.3%) were second, and
