Abstract
The patient was a 47-year-old woman, whose chest roentgenogram revealed a coin lesion in the right middle lobe. Chest CT scan showed a mass lesion in the right S5. The tumor was diagnosed as malignant melanoma by transbronchial lung biopsy. No lesions outside the lung could be found, and right middle and lower bilobectomy with mediastinal dissection were carried out. The lung specimen contained a darkly pigmented tumor measuring 3.3 × 3.0 × 2.7 cm. Histological examination did not reveal so-called junctional changes. Mediastinal lymph nodes (# 4) were positive. The patient died 9 months postoperatively, and autopsy revealed multiple metastases. Only 4 cases of primary malignant melanoma of the lung have been reported in the Japanese literature.
