Abstract
The patient was a 68-year-old woman who received transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) for multiple metastatic lesions in the liver originated from endocrine carcinoma of the pancreatic body and tail in September 2002. Because a favorable locoregional tumor control in the liver had been achieved, the patient underwent distal pancreatectomy for the primary pancreatic lesion 3 months after the TACE. After distal pancreatectomy, the patient additionally received 3 further TACEs for the treatment of tumor relapses in the liver. A rapidly growing tumor in the left chest wall, which was diagnosed as a metastatic lesion of pancreatic endocrine carcinoma by fine needle aspiration biopsy, was identified and resected including the 3rd, 4th and 5th ribs in July 2009. The patient remains alive as of 96 months after the initial diagnosis of pancreatic endocrine carcinoma with multiple liver metastases.
This case report serves to emphasize that aggressive multimodal treatment for pancreatic endocrine carcinoma potentially offers a long-term survival even in cases with concurrent distant metastases. Although the chest wall metastasis is considered as a rare form of metastasis arising from pancreatic endocrine carcinoma, this unusual metastatic disease also needs to be kept in mind from the viewpoint of long-term follow up for the patient with pancreatic endocrine carcinoma.
