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Rationale: Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) has been associated with the use of several medications, including chemotherapeutic agents., Patient Concerns: A 65-year-old woman was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the ovary, after sixth-line treatment with topotecan, at the beginning of the fourth cycle, she was admitted to the emergency room for presenting tonic-clonic seizures, visual disturbance, and hypertension. A 66-year-old woman was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer; due to disease progression, treatment with paclitaxel and gemcitabine was started, 1 month after the last dose of chemotherapy, she was admitted to the emergency room for suffering severe headache, altered mental status, tonic-clonic seizures, and hypertension. A 60-year-old patient diagnosed with breast cancer on the left side, underwent second-line chemotherapy with gemcitabine, carboplatin, and bevacizumab, and 1 month after the last dose of chemotherapy, she was also admitted to the emergency room due to altered mental status, vomiting, tonic-clonic seizures, and hypertension., Diagnosis: They were diagnosed as PRES based on physical examination, laboratory findings, and imaging techniques that revealed diffuse lesions and edema within the parieto-occipital regions., Interventions: They received support treatment with blood pressure (BP) control, seizures were controlled with a single anti-epileptic agent, and chemotherapeutic agents from the onset of PRES to its resolution were discontinued., Outcomes: All these patients improved after medical treatment was started., Lessons: Medical personnel and therapeutic establishments need to be made aware about this chemotherapy-induced neurologic complication.

Background: Overall survival (OS) of patients with Brain Cancer (BC) is slowly increasing. The disease itself and its treatments deeply impact patient Health-related quality of life (HRQL). Therefore, valid and reliable instruments are needed. In this study, the Mexican-Spanish version of the QLQ-BN20 instrument is psychometrically and clinically validated. Methods: Patients with brain cancer (BC) (primary or metastatic) evaluated at a tertiary cancer center, were invited to respond to the questionnaire, as well as the core-module QLQ-C30. Tests to demonstrate the instrument's internal consistency, the association of HRQL scales with clinical variables and OS were investigated. Results: One hundred and nineteen patients were included in this cohort: 77 women and 42 men (mean age, 46.2 years). Patients answered both instruments in < 30 min. Good convergent [all correlation coefficients (CC) > 0.37] and discriminant validity was observed and was associated with significant overlap (CC 0.007-0.68). All four multi-item scales of QLQ-BN20 also demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach α > 0.7). Several scales of the QLQ-BN20 were significantly associated with performance status and a modified Recursive Partition Analysis. Of the possible scale correlations, 40 of 161 (24.8%) scales in both instruments, were significantly (directly or inversely) correlated. Visual disorders, Motor dysfunction, Seizures and Weakness of the legs presented association with OS ( p < 0.05). Conclusion: The Mexican-Spanish version of the BN20 instrument is valid and reliable and can be used in clinical trials in patients with BC. Some HRQL scales were associated with OS and could therefore be incorporated in future studies of prognostic models.

Background: Thymoma is the most common mediastinal tumor, representing <1% of all cancers. It is usually associated with paraneoplastic disorders, mainly myasthenia gravis (MG). The aim of the present study was to describe patients with thymoma and the differences between those with MG and those without it., Methods: A retrospective 10-year database of the patients with thymoma treated at a single cancer referral hospital (National Institute of Cancer, Mexico City), was analyzed., Results: Sixty-four files from patients with thymoma were analyzed, 18 of them had MG. The symptoms that occurred most frequently in patients with MG were ptosis, diplopia, appendicular weakness, dysphonia and dysphagia. The most frequent Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) stage was IIIb followed by stage I. Almost all the patients with MG had positive Acetylcholine Receptor antibodies (P<0.001), with not specified antibodies in four patients. The median overall survival showed a trend to be higher among the patients with MG, but there were no significant differences., Conclusions: In patients with thymoma MG manifests with different clinical and autoimmune traits, but not survival differences. A larger multi-centric study should be encouraged to evaluate the prognostic implications of having MG in patients with thymoma., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.