Abstract
Background. Solitary papillomas occurring in the peripheral region of the lungs are rare. Case. A 61-year-old woman was referred to our department for surgical treatment of a nodular lesion in the right lower lung that was incidentally detected on chest computed tomography. She underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) segmentectomy of right S8-9. The intraoperative diagnosis revealed a typical papillary growth pattern of glandular epithelial cells without cytologic atypia. The tumor was histologically diagnosed as a solitary glandular papilloma of the lungs. The patient's postoperative course was uneventful, and no recurrence was observed for 15 months postoperatively. Discussion. Solitary papillomas of the lungs are benign epithelial tumors. Complete surgical resection is currently the standard treatment for such tumors. However, this operative procedure remains controversial due to the tumor's malignant potential. Some physicians prefer to use local excision, while others perform lobectomy with mediastinal lymph node dissection. In our case, the patient was successfully treated with local excision. To the best of our knowledge, malignant transformation has been reported in the squamous variant only. The glandular variant does not tend to recur locally after local excision and has no proven malignant potential. Conclusions. We recommend performing local excision to treat solitary glandular papillomas in order to preserve the pulmonary function.
