Pulmonary hypertension as a presentation of hepatocarcinoma: Report of a case and brief review of the literature

Abstract

A case, unique in the literature, is reported in which a primary carcinoma of the liver presented as right-sided heart failure and pulmonary hypertension. The diagnosis of hepatocarcinoma was established by needle biopsy of the liver. Later, postmortem examination demonstrated that the pulmonary arterial tree was severely compromised by multiple tumor microemboli, despite the persistent lack of characteristic roentgenographic abnormality in our patient. In reviewing the literature, we found rare cases of occult renal cell carcinoma, choriocarcinoma and one of occult hepatocarcinoma, which presented as pulmonary embolism. These were diagnosed by pulmonary embolectomy, human chorionic gonadotrophin levels or autopsy, respectively. In another small group of reported cases of known carcinoma (gastric, breast, colonic) the patients had a clinical picture of “idiopathic” pulmonary hypertension or of pulmonary hypertension with pulmonary metastases. Pulmonary hypertension in these cases resulted from carcinomatous lymphangitis and/or tumor microembolization, as in our case. We report this case to emphasize the necessity of including occult carcinoma in the differential diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular failure.