2017 Volume 39 Issue 3 Pages 273-277
Background. In the field of respiratory surgery, tracheal mature teratomas are rarely reported, while mediastinal mature teratomas are quite common. Case. A 43-year-old man was treated for bronchial asthma at another hospital; chest computed tomography (CT) revealed an intratracheal mass on the left side, approximately 2 cm in size, and it invaded the tracheal lumen by approximately 50%. Furthermore, there was a 4-cm cervical tumor on the left side of the thyroid gland, which was not continuous with the tracheal mass. The patient was referred to our hospital where he underwent bronchoscopy; there was a tumor protruding from the left side of the tracheal wall to the tracheal lumen, 5 cm from the vocal cords. While the levels of tumor markers were normal, positron emission tomography-CT revealed a tracheal tumor and a cervical tumor with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake; the corresponding standardized uptake values were 3.6 and 8.3, respectively. Therefore we suspected primary malignant tracheal tumor and lymph node metastasis. The patient underwent resection, during which 2 cm of the tracheal wall was resected. The results of the rapid intraoperative pathological diagnosis indicated a teratoma. We did not perform cervical lymph node dissection because we suspected it to be inflammatory lymphadenopathy. Conclusion. We encountered a case of a tracheal teratoma with cervical lymphadenopathy that was suspected to be a malignant tumor.
