Abstract
BackgroundOesophageal cancer has a high metastatic potential and poor prognosis, with a significant risk of recurrence after radical resection. However, resected pancreatic metastasis from oesophageal cancer is rare.Case presentationEleven years prior, a seventy-year-old woman had been treated with transthoracic radical oesophagectomy for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Four years prior, she had undergone chemotherapy for lymph node recurrence at the splenic hilum and achieved a partial response. She had also received chemoradiotherapy for lymph node recurrence at the splenic hilum 3 years prior; a complete response was achieved. However, routine follow-up with abdominal computed tomography recently revealed a tumour at the pancreatic tail and swollen lymph nodes. The patient underwent distal pancreatectomy on the basis of a pre-operative diagnosis of primary pancreatic cancer, although a histological examination of the surgical specimen revealed metastatic squamous cell carcinoma that was compatible with metachronous pancreatic metastasis from oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. The patient has been undergoing clinical follow-up without adjuvant therapy and has been disease-free for 24 months after resection of the pancreatic metastasis.ConclusionsResection of pancreatic metastasis may improve prognosis and should be considered when treating patients with solitary metastasis from oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Highlights
Oesophageal cancer has a high metastatic potential and poor prognosis, with a significant risk of recurrence after radical resection
No other metastases were seen on evaluation with positron emission tomography/computed tomography (CT) (Fig. 4), which strongly suggested primary pancreatic tail cancer with lymph node metastasis
Distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy with lymphadenectomy were performed to treat the tumour, which had a diameter of 30 mm and appeared to invade the artery of the gastric tube that had been reconstructed during the oesophagectomy
Summary
Oesophageal cancer has a high metastatic potential and poor prognosis, with a significant risk of recurrence after radical resection. Conclusions: Resection of pancreatic metastasis may improve prognosis and should be considered when treating patients with solitary metastasis from oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. * Correspondence: dragonpegasus427@gmail.com; dragonpegasus@keio.jp 1Department of Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-8582, Japan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article carcinoma (OSCC), respectively [5].
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