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Vol.40 No.3 contents | Japanese/English |
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- Case Report -
A Case of Primary Malignant Melanoma of the Lung
Hidenori Hara, Shi-Xu Jiang*, Keiichi Iwabuchi*, Jun Shinada, Hirokuni Yoshimura and Toru Kameya*Departments of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Pathology*, Kitasato University School of Medicine
Background: Making a diagnosis of primary malignant melanoma of the lung is difficult, because it must meet strict criteria to interpret the lesion as primary. Case: A 63-year-old woman was referred to us for an abnormal shadow on routine chest X-ray film. A nodular lesion of about 3 cm in diameter was found in S8 of the right lower lobe. Since a definitive diagnosis was not obtained by fiberoptic bronchoscopy, thoracotomy was performed. A diagnosis of malignant melanoma was made by frozen section, and right lower lobectomy with mediastinal lymph node dissection (R2a) was performed. Histologically, the tumor was malignant melanoma with "junctional change" in the adjacent bronchial epithelium. Furthermore, multiple melanocytes regarded as non-neoplastic were present in some bronchioles distal to the tumor. Postsurgically, extensive examinations of various sites including the skin, mucosa, scalp, genital and anal regions, and eyes revealed no melanocytic lesion. She had also no past history of excision or fulguration of any skin lesions. Therefore, we presumed the lesion in the lung to be primary. Conclusion: We report a case of primary malignant melanoma of the lung. It is extremely rare and only less than 25 cases have been reported so far to the best of our knowledge.
key words: Malignant melanoma, Primary lung cancer
Received: January 28, 2000
Accepted: March 7, 2000
JJLC 40 (3): 201-205, 2000
