Preclinical diagnosis of abdominal tumours by ultrasound examination

Editor,—Papanicolaou et al 1 reported their experience of using abdominal ultrasound for the preclinical diagnosis of neuroblastoma in seven infants. The authors suggest that this may be a useful screening technique and urge paediatricians to perform this examination as it is “non-invasive, painless, and safe”. Unfortunately, the authors are clearly unaware of the controversy which surrounds infant screening for neuroblastoma. It has been used throughout Japan since 1985 and has been studied in Europe and North America.2 Screening infants for neuroblastoma greatly increases the observed cumulative incidence of the disease, and up to 75% of all infants detected by biochemical screening have tumours which would otherwise have undergone spontaneous regression and would …