Abstract
The case involved a 79-year-old man who underwent low anterior resection for rectal cancer in May 2001, and partial resection of the lung for recurrent lung metastases in February 2004, March 2004 and June 2005, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy. The plasma CEA level began to be elevated in October 2005. He had been followed carefully until June 2008 when he was admitted to the hospital because left upper abdominal pain developed. Abdominal CT scan showed a mass in the pancreas tail. Metastatic pancreatic cancer was diagnosed and we perfomed disatal pancreatectomy, splenectomy and partial gastrectomy.
The 2-cm tumor was shown histologically to be well differentiated adenocarcinoma, which was identical to the rectal cancer and metastatic foci in the lung and was negative for cytokeratin 7 and positive for cytokeratin 20. Accordingly metastasis to the pancreas from rectal cancer was diagnosed.
Although metastasis to the pancreas from colorectal cancer is rare, several cases have shown that multi organ metastasis during the course of the disease usually carries a poor prognosis. We present this case with a review of other 27 cases reported in the literature.
