Primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma.

Abstract

Primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma is a rare entity and is peculiar only to man. Although rigid criteria such as serial biopsies of the gonads are essential to rule out the possibility of such mediastinal tumor as a metastatic lesion, a review of the literature shows that anterior mediastinum is rarely involved by the metastasis from gonadal tumors. The clinical diagnosis of such a tumor can be made by the presence of the triad of chest pain, cough and gynecomastia in a man in the third decade. The prognosis of such a lesion is uniformly hopeless irrespective of the mode of treatment. A case of primary mediastinal choriocarcinoma in a 22-year-old man has been described. This case brings the total number of cases to 16.