Abstract
Recently, the number of patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for various hematopoietic disorders has increased gradually. It has been reported that the risk of occurrence of solid cancers as liver and head and neck cancers is high among such patients. We report on a case of tongue cancer in a youth who had undergone BMT 7 years before.
The 18-year-old man first visited our hospital with a mass on the left side of the tongue. He had suffered acute lymphatic leukemia (ALL) at 11 years old and underwent BMT after chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He developed acute graft versus host disease (GVHD) after BMT and his clinical features progressed to chronic GVHD.
A number of patients who undergo BMT receive a preparative regimen combining chemotherapy with total body irradiation (TBI) . It is suspected that these therapies induce the mutation of the host-gene and that local factors in the host organs damaged by chronic inflammation in GVHD may contribute to the development of solid cancers. It is suggested that follow-up in the oral cavity is needed at regular intervals in patients after BMT.
