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Vol.39 No.7 contents | Japanese/English |
- Case Report -
A Peripheral Small Cell Carcinoma of the Lung with Cavity Formation
Akihiro Yoshimoto, Hiroshi Tsuji, Eisuke Takazakura, Toshio Watanabe*, Kazuo Kasahara** and Masaki Fujimura**Department of Internal Medicine, Kurobe City Hospital, *Department of Thoracic Surgery, Kurobe City Hospital, **The Third Department of Internal Medicine, Kanazawa University, School of Medicine
An 81-year-old man presented with productive cough. He was admitted because of an abnormal shadow in the left upper lung field on chest X-ray. Chest CT scan showed a multilocular mass shadow in left S1+2 with cavity formation and small shadows suggestive of metastases around the primary mass. One of the latter shadows also contained a cavity. Sputum cytology and pleural effusion cytology showed class V, small cell carcinoma. The transbronchial lung biopsy specimen showed many small cells with dense nuclei and scanty cytoplasm, so a diagnosis of small cell carcinoma was made. Cavity formation in primary carcinoma of the lung is fairly common, with the reported incidence ranging from 2 to 16 percent. However most such cases are squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma, not small cell carcinoma. Small cell carcinoma showing a multilocular mass shadow with cavities in the primary and a metastatic lesion, as seen in the present case, is rare.
key words: Small cell carcinoma of the lung, Cavity, Pulmonary metastasis, Multilocular mass
Received: August 16, 1998
Accepted: October 29, 1999
JJLC 39 (7): 1001-1005, 1999
