Abstract
A 70-year-old woman with breast cancer underwent an operation under general anesthesia. During the operation, she developed a right pneumothorax. Despite 7 days of chest drainage, an air leak developed. To close the leaking visceral pleura, a wedge resection of the right lung was performed via video-assisted thoracic surgery. Macroscopicaly, the specimen showed a 12-mm nodule in the lung parenchyma. On pathology, the nodule was a squamous cell carcinoma that invaded the visceral pleura ; a complete lobectomy of the right lower lobe with lymph node dissection was performed for the primary lung cancer. Despite the administration of adjuvant chemotherapy, the patient died of pleural dissemination 11 months after the first operation. The onset of pneumothorax as an initial symptom of lung cancer is rare ; however, in the case of elderly patients with pneumothorax and with emphysematous changes in the lungs, the possibility of lung cancer should be considered.
