Abstract
A 69-year-old woman was referred to our department due to abnormal shadows on a chest radiograph. Chest CT revealed a mass shadow with a cavity in the right upper lobe and a mass shadow with calcification in the right lower lobe. Bronchoscopy was performed, but a definitive diagnosis could not be obtained. The diagnosis based on CT-guided percutaneous lung biopsy for the right lower mass was carcinoma. A histological diagnosis for the right upper lobe was not obtained, but we suspected that it was a malignancy according to the imaging studies. We perfomed video-assisted thoracoscopic pneumonectomy on the suspicion of synchronous multiple lung cancers or lower lobe lung cancer with a metastasizing nodule in the ipsilateral upper lobe. Pathology revealed the tumors in the upper lobe and lower lobe to be moderately differentiated squamous cell lung cancer and small cell lung cancer, respectively. These were diagnosed as synchronous multiple lung cancers. The cancers had not spread to the lymph nodes, so we could perform complete resection. Synchronous multiple cancers including small cell lung cancer and squamous cell lung cancer without lymph node metastasis are extremely rare. We report a rare case of synchronous multiple lung cancers including small cell lung cancer and squamous cell lung cancer which were resected completely by right pneumonectomy.
