2002 Volume 35 Issue 4 Pages 450-454
A 71-year-old woman admitted to evaluate a liver tumor was found by ultrasonography to have a homogeneously hyperechoic mass of 7×5 cm in diameter from anterior to median segments. Her history included rectal polyps treated by transanal resection 4 years earlier at an other hospital. The mass appeared as a lowdensity tumor with ring-like enhancement in the early dynamic computed tomography (CT) phase. Angiography showed a homogeneous tumor stain, leading to a diagnosis of liver cell adenoma that we treated with central bisegmentectomy. The histological diagnosis was carcinoid tumor, farther shown by histological findings of the rectal polyp, to be a rectal carcinoid 1.1 cm in diameter with submucosal (sm) invasion. The final diagnosis of this liver tumor was metastasis from a rectal carcinoid. Liver metastasis from a rectal carcinoid less than 2 cm in diameter and limited to the submucosal layer is rare, with only 12 cases, including ours, reported in the Japanese literature.
