Abstract
Metastasis occurs with 50% of lung carcinomas, most commonly to lymph nodes, adrenal glands, liver, bone, and brain. It is extremely rare for lung cancer to present with symptoms of a gastrointestinal metastasis and even more so pertaining to the colon. To the best of our knowledge, only 12 such cases have been reported in the literature. We describe a case of a 71-year-old female presenting with refractory iron deficiency anemia that was found to have a lesion in the transverse colon. Pathology revealed adenocarcinoma of the lung and a subsequent lung lesion was discovered in a retrograde fashion.
Highlights
We describe a primary lung adenocarcinoma presenting with a colon lesion and subsequent anemia
The small bowel is an unusual location for lung carcinoma to metastasize to and is the most common site within the GI tract; the colon is an even more unusual destination for such metastatic disease [6]
To the best of our knowledge, of the 12 clinical cases of lung cancer metastasis to the colon reported in literature [1, 8,9,10,11,12], 10 had exhibited a tissue diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma [2]
Summary
Lung cancer is a common malignancy with roughly 50% of cases demonstrating metastasis [1]. The most commonly affected sites for metastasis are lymph nodes, adrenal glands, liver, bone, and brain [1,2,3]. Several autopsy studies have shown metastasis to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract more commonly than previously thought, occurring in approximately 0.2% to 11.9% of cases but usually with diffuse metastatic disease [2]. Symptomatic GI metastasis of lung cancer is extremely rare, estimated to occur in 0.2% to 0.5% of cases [2, 4, 5]. Regardless, the prevalence of symptomatic colonic metastasis from a primary lung carcinoma is an uncommon event. We describe a primary lung adenocarcinoma presenting with a colon lesion and subsequent anemia
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