A case of pulmonary hamartoma with gradual enlargement during 8-year follow-up

Abstract

A 78-year-old woman who had undergone radical surgery for papillary thyroid cancer at the age of 60 years was followed up regularly with computed tomography (CT). CT performed 10 years after surgery revealed a 1.3-mm nodular shadow located in S10 of the right lung. Annual follow-up CT showed that the nodule had a tendency to grow slowly. CT performed at 8 years of follow-up revealed that the tumor shadow had increased to 10 mm. Lung metastasis of thyroid cancer or a low-grade lung malignancy was suspected, and the patient underwent thoracoscopic partial pulmonary resection. The pathological diagnosis was pulmonary hamartoma. The doubling time of the tumor was 319 days. In the literature, few previous studies described the long-term clinical course of a newly developed pulmonary hamartoma and measured the tumor doubling time.