Abstract
We describe the case of a patient who had a recurrent breast tumor in the abdominal wall at the insertion point of her ventriculoperitoneal (V-P) shunt. The patient was 52-year-old woman who had been treated for subarachnoid hemorrhage and had undergone V-P shunt placement for postoperative hydrocephalus. Four months after the shunt placement, she was diagnosed with right breast cancer. Mammography and ultrasonography (US) revealed that the shunt tube had penetrated the right breast tumor. The shunt tube was simultaneously resected en bloc during the mastectomy. The cut edges of the resected specimens and the V-P shunt route along with the shunt were found to be free from cancer cells. Fourteen months after the mastectomy, US revealed a round tumor (1 cm in diameter) on the abdominal wall of the previous V-P shunt route, and local excision of the tumor was carried out. The pathological diagnosis was adenocarcinoma, which was considered as the recurrence of the breast cancer possibly related to the V-P shunt. In this case report, we discuss the operative procedure in a patient with a V-P shunt and the rare recurrent breast cancer at the abdominal wall where the V-P shunt had been previously placed.
